The Sea That Left: A Guide to the Aral

The Aral was fed by two great rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. From the 1960s most of their water was diverted into a vast irrigation network for the cotton fields of Central Asia. The rivers kept watering the fields; the sea began to shrink. In 1987 it split into a Northern and a Southern Aral. In 2003 the Southern Aral split again into western and eastern basins, and in August 2014 satellite images showed the eastern basin completely dry for the first time.

The exposed seabed became a new desert, the Aralkum. It is salty, and on windy days dust storms lift that salt into the air. At its peak the Aral fishing industry employed about 40,000 people; commercial fishing ended by 1987.

The rusting fishing boats on the old shoreline are the picture everyone knows, and standing among them is still a strong moment. But the key to the place is the small museum in the town. Its black-and-white photographs of the working port, its fishing records and its map of the shoreline retreating decade by decade turn a striking view into something you understand. We always suggest seeing the ships first and the museum second.

Muynak has also found a new kind of life: since 2018 the town has hosted Stihia, an electronic music festival held right by the ship graveyard to draw attention to the Aral. It is a sign that the region has not simply closed down and waited.

Beyond Muynak the road runs over the former bottom of the sea, and here begins the part of the story that rarely makes the photographs. On the dried seabed people plant saxaul, a tough desert tree that holds sand with its roots and needs almost no water, to stop the salt and dust from blowing. In March 2025 a project backed by UNDP planted 80,000 saxaul seedlings on 80 hectares in Muynak district, and in early 2026 a new campaign began to plant another 90,000 seedlings.

A young plantation looks modest: low grey-green shrubs, far apart. But it grows on what used to be sea, and each shrub holds down sand that would otherwise rise with the wind.

On the way to the shore the route climbs onto the Ustyurt, a limestone plateau that breaks off in steep cliffs where it meets the old seabed. There are no towns and no green valleys here, only a flat upland cut by canyons that look almost lunar in the low evening light. It is one of the quietest places in Uzbekistan: no road noise, no crowds, nothing built for many kilometres.

The night is spent in a camp by the water. In the morning the walk down to the shore takes longer than it looks from above. The water of the Southern Aral is very salty, and the shore is grey and firm, in places crusted white with salt. For most of our guests this quiet morning is the reason they came.

The Southern Aral will not return to what it was: the Amu Darya rarely reaches it now. In the north the story is different. In 2005 the Kokaral dam was completed, separating the Northern Aral from the southern part. Within three years the water level in the north rose by about 12 metres, the salinity fell from about 30 to 8 grams per litre, and freshwater fish came back. The Northern Aral shows that part of a sea can be returned when the water is kept.

The return route crosses the plateau again and stops at Sudochie Lake, a wetland where about half of the region's roughly 230 bird species breed. The last stop before Nukus is Mizdakhan, an active historic necropolis on low hills near Khojeyli, with the ruins of the ancient town of Gyaur-Kala and mausoleums built over many centuries. As at any cemetery in use, visitors walk quietly and dress modestly.

Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, is where the trip begins and ends, and it holds one of the great surprises of Central Asia. The State Museum of Art named after Igor Savitsky keeps around 100,000 exhibits, including one of the largest collections of Soviet avant-garde art anywhere, gathered by Savitsky over decades, alongside Karakalpak jewellery, costume and archaeology. If your flight allows, give it a few hours before or after the Aral. Our article on the Savitsky Museum explains what to see.