Karakalpakstan: Nukus, the Aral Sea and the desert fortresses — a travel guide

The Republic of Karakalpakstan is the north-west of Uzbekistan, and it is big: about 166,600 km², more than a third of the country. It lies on the lower course of the Amu Darya, where the river reaches its delta. The Kyzylkum desert runs to the east, the Ustyurt plateau rises to the west, and in the north lies what remains of the Aral Sea. The capital is Nukus.

About 2.1 million people live here. Karakalpak and Uzbek are both official languages, and in Nukus you will hear Russian too. Karakalpak is a Turkic language close to Kazakh, and the name of the people comes from two words, qara, “black”, and qalpaq, “hat”. The yurt, silver jewellery, embroidered costume and long epics passed down by storytellers, the zhyrau, are the heritage you will keep meeting here, in museums and at the table.

Nukus is a young city: it was officially founded in 1932 and now has about 350,000 people. Its wide streets were laid out in the 20th century, and most travellers come for one address. The State Museum of Art named after Igor Savitsky holds the Russian and Central Asian avant-garde, Karakalpak applied art and finds from ancient Khorezm. We have written a separate article about it: the Savitsky Museum in Nukus, with its history, its artists and the halls not to miss.

Two practical things to plan around. The museum is closed on Mondays, so do not arrive in Nukus on a Sunday evening for one day only. And give it at least half a day; the rest of the day goes to Mizdakhan, just outside the city.

Mizdakhan stands on hills just west of the town of Khojeyli, about 40 minutes by car from Nukus. The site covers some 200 hectares. On one hill are the ruins of the Gyaur-Kala fortress, whose earliest walls go back to the 4th century BC; on the next is a necropolis where the last burials date to the 14th century. The city around it was destroyed in Timur’s campaigns against Khorezm and was never rebuilt, so the hills were left to the dead.

Go down into the underground mausoleum of Mazlum Khan Sulu, and walk among the domed tombs to the small columns of bricks that visitors stack along the paths. A local legend says that a brick falls from one of the old mausoleums every year, and when the last one falls the world will end; so people add bricks of their own and make a wish. Come in the late afternoon, when the light is low and the domes stand against the desert.

Chilpik is the other hill, about 43 km south of Nukus on the road to Turtkul. A ring of clay wall crowns a natural hill about 35 m high. It is a dakhma, a tower of silence more than two thousand years old, from the time before Islam, when the dead were laid out in the open. The climb takes a few minutes, and from the top you see the Amu Darya valley. It fits on the way between Nukus and the fortresses.

Muynak is about 200 km north of Nukus. Until the second half of the 20th century it was a port and a fishing town with a cannery. As the rivers that fed the Aral were drawn off for irrigation, the shore moved away, and the town was left standing in a new desert, the Aralkum, the former bed of the sea.

The rusting boats stand by the Aral Sea memorial at the north end of town, on the edge of what used to be the harbour. From the viewpoint above them you look out over the old seabed. The small town museum shows paintings and photographs of the years when Muynak still fished. Take your time with both: the ships tell the end of the story, the museum tells how it began.

The water itself is still about 200 km beyond Muynak, across the Ustyurt plateau, and the last stretch is a jeep track along the edge of the plateau, past cliffs that fall to the old seabed. People do not go to the Aral to swim. They go to stand on a shore that has moved, in silence that is hard to find anywhere else.

How the sea shrank and what the trip is like we explain in the Aral Sea today. Our 2-day Aral Sea extension starts with a morning flight from Tashkent to Nukus, goes by 4×4 to Muynak and across the Ustyurt to a night in a camp by the water, and comes back through Sudochie Lake and Mizdakhan to the evening flight. It is built to be added to a longer route, and a guide in your language is included.

Across the Amu Darya from Khiva, on the edge of the Kyzylkum, stand the clay fortresses of ancient Khorezm. The area is called Ellikqala, “fifty fortresses”, and the district of Karakalpakstan still carries the name. Ayaz-Kala, three fortresses on and below a hill, is the best known; its oldest walls date from the 4th–3rd century BC. Toprak-Kala was a capital of Khorezm in the 2nd–3rd century AD, and Kyzyl-Kala stands right beside it. Since 2008 the “Desert Castles of Ancient Khorezm” have been on Uzbekistan’s tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage.

The fortresses lie between Khiva and Nukus, about 150 km from Nukus, so they work best on the road from one to the other. Each one, its legends and the yurt camp by Ayaz-Kala are in our guide to the desert fortresses of Khorezm. If you are staying in Khiva, book our trip to the Ayaz-Kala fortress.