Uzbekistan prides itself for the wonders of Samarkand and Khiva; for the legacy of the Khanate of Bukhara; for the fertile Ferghana valley; for the might of the Timurid and Sogdian empires. Yet the young republic is also known for an ongoing disaster: the slow but unstoppable shrinking of the Aral Sea. Deep inside the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, Western Uzbekistan, the inland sea used to cover 70,000 sq km, boosting the local economy with fishery. Yet in the 1960s, Nikita Khrushev’s USSR diverted its two tributary rivers - the Amu-Darya and the Syr-Darya - in the hope of fertilising the desert. Not only did the irrigation plan fail, but the Aral sea lost its only water conveyors. Now the young Uzbek republic deals with the consequences: if the Tashkent-Samarkand- Nukus axis is easily connectable, venturing west towards Karakalpakstan is another story. Western Uzbekistan is a vast, impenetrable desert, hostile to humankind. We tried to reach the sea, yet we never saw water.
From Nukus, the last major city to the west, we took a taxi to the small town of Kungrad. The ride took about three hours, and we paid the driver for his return to Nukus - otherwise, why would he drive all the way there? Kungrad is an isolated town in the middle of a cloudless desert. Yet it is still filled with a bustling population, where every building is occupied.
Once there, we looked for a way to reach Moynaq, the former major fishing port of the Aral sea, which lies 150 km away from the first drops of water. We’re told to wait at the bus station, for the daily bus to Moynaq will apparently arrive very soon. After several hours, the bus arrived. Dozens of women and men of all ages stormed the doors of the vehicle. The seats were quickly taken, and the aisle flooded with standing bodies. Though the bus was already full, it remained halted at the station for another hour under the blazing sun. All passengers patiently sweat inside the static bus, until bags of goods appeared outside the vehicle: potatoes, watermelons and products of all kinds were pushed into the bus, squeezed through the patient passengers. Bags of vegetables took up the little space available; water found its way between sandals and personal luggage; sealed bags were sent to the back, creating seats for us standing passengers. The various products destined for Moynaq took up almost more space than passengers, yet the rules of physics were defied, for everyone and everything fitted into the vehicle. Our bus, seemingly the only link between Moynak and the rest of Uzbekistan, was now ready to depart.
The journey from Kungrad to Moynaq was a two-hour drive on a straight road through a desert landscape: not a tree, not a building, not a flower. In fact, not a standing thing. A mere horizon of dry and dying shrubs. An endless journey rhythmed by the countless bumps and holes of a disused asphalt road.
Believing we arrived in Moynak, we alighted at the wrong stop, and stepped into some sort of suburb, if one can call that a suburb: four or five tired buildings, two or three loitering locals and a few cars, which drivers offered to drive us into town. We politely declined, which we’d soon regret. On one side, the endless desert expanse. On the other, the road leading to Moynaq. This road had all the characteristics of a post-Soviet Central Asian avenue: long, straight, wide, surrounded by buildings. Yet the avenue is dilapidated, the buildings crumbling and human life is sparse. The path turned out to be endless, as we walked for a good two hours in this monotonous setting under a burning sun: the road, no car; some buildings, no being; the desert, no sign of life.
And suddenly, we saw it: below yellow cliffs, a dry yellow stretch of sand and shrubs took up the horizon. The slight depression below the cliffs told us where the water used to reach the shore. Yet not a trace of blue, not an ounce of water. Nothing but a desolate and bleak landscape.
We climbed down the cliffs, and skirted the coast before coming across the first ships: two small trawlers resting on the sand, corroded by rust. Their bows pointed towards the horizon, as if they were patiently, yet desperately, waiting for the rising tide. Further on, other ships composed what is commonly called “the cemetery of boats”: Red and rusty vessels facing the horizon, like boats in a harbour at low tide. Around these vessels, reminiscent of a bygone era, goats grazed, ignoring the desolate scenery in which they waddled. Children played in the holes of the eroded cliff, climbing where waves used to hit the shore.
We climbed back up to the shore, to look over a striking view over the Aral Desert, honoured by a monument commemorating Moynaq’s golden age. We came across four off-duty police officers from the east, who came to pay a visit. They quickly took an avid interest in us, for they figured our intention to spend the night in Moynaq. They seem concerned by our situation - all foreigners must be registered at a hotel each night - yet they insinuated that there is no place to stay in town. They spent one hour making calls, looking for a bed on our behalf. Unsuccessful, they left us to our own demise at nightfall.
We then headed towards the town centre: a maze of sandy streets filled with concrete buildings and adobe houses. Quite a few children played in the streets. If every city, town and village in Uzbekistan was filled with children and teenagers, we were told that the population of Moynaq had fallen from 60 000 to less than 5000 inhabitants within half a century. Yet many boys and girls swarmed the neighbourhood. A group of young people ran towards us. They guided us to a place to eat.
We entered some sort of café: six wooden tables and benches covered by tacky blankets, and a bar counter filled with bags of crisps and plastic beer bottles. Four customers were sitting, laughing at the sight of our presence. We asked the owner for something to eat. She gave us three bags of crisps and a bottle of beer. We then got the bill: the price of a full meal in a nice restaurant in Eastern Uzbekistan. We may have paid the tourist price, yet we saw earlier that day how products were brought into town. As goods are hard to import into Moynak, the value of any given product must be quite consequent. There is no water here, no agriculture, therefore no locally accessible food. Everything must come from elsewhere.
Now how can locals sustain in a region which only thrived thanks to the Aral Sea? What do locals do for a living? Where do they work? What do they earn? If we could not obtain answers to these questions in Moynaq, we were given some clues a few days later in Khiva. A resident explained to us that Russian and Chinese companies prospected in the Aral Desert, hunting for gas and natural resources. They hired local employees from Moynaq and other remote villages. We had neither proof nor confirmation of this, but the hypothesis is perfectly credible, for we found no job or occupation in Moynaq, and no valid resource that could propel the local economy, besides a few lean cows and goats… The region lacked everything, and probably hardly afforded constant importation. The population is vanishing, migrating to the richer and greener East. Indeed, many houses seemed to fall into decay, Moynaq had more buildings than people. What about diseases? What about the infant mortality rate, or life expectancy? None of these answers were obtained in our succinct Moynaq dinner. We paid, and left the cafe.
As we needed a place to camp, we returned to the viewpoint above the Aral desert. We set up our sleeping bags and bivi bags on the ground, below the monument. Plunged into darkness, we were ready to go to sleep when an elderly man suddenly appeared from the shadows. The doddering and haggard man, simply dressed in a worn blue collar outfit and a beret, asked us in Russian for a cigarette. He then sat next to us to smoke it. He could have been ninety, though was probably younger. He told us that he is Kazakh, and he arrived here during Soviet times. He lost his job with the fall of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, our skills in Russian weren’t good enough to understand the nature of his job. Yet we gathered that he’s been surviving in the outskirts of Moynaq ever since. As he acknowledged that we’re about to go to sleep, he lied beside us, shoulder to shoulder. Though he found an odd comfort in lying by our side, he was by far the least unbearable feature of that night.
We hoped that, as most deserts are cold at night, we’d feel comfortable under the warmth of our sleeping bags. We were also hoping that, thanks to the region’s dryness, we would not be harassed by bothersome bloodsuckers. We could not be more wrong. The combination of heat and mosquitoes turned this night to be quite arduous. They flew by thousands and bit any accessible piece of skin. We had to choose between torrential sweat under our boiling sleeping bags, or countless bites in the search for fresh air. We opted for the sweat, yet my swollen arm only spent half a minute outside its cover.
There must be moisture somewhere here, for mosquitoes need humidity to lay eggs and thrive. Could there be a water table under Moynaq? Is there a possibility to retrieve water in the region? This moisture is invisible. Only the goats seem at ease, while the few skinny cows look tired. The heat stagnates at night. Yet does it mean that there’s hope for water? I wonder if mosquitoes also bothered our Kazakh friend, for he disappeared in the night during our sleep. He has been living in these conditions for at least three decades. Maybe he’s still there these days.
We hardly slept that night, and we were restlessly waiting for the sunrise. Once up, the sun vociferously blazed throughout the morning in a cloudless sky. Metal sheets and cement buildings rubbed shoulders with old thatched buildings. Only two or three people appeared in the streets that morning.
In a country with a growing population, where towns are teeming with restaurants, cafes and shops, Moynaq seems estranged, not only from Uzbekistan, but also from the Aral sea itself: we gave up on trying to reach the remnants of the sea, as it appeared practically impossible:a ride would have been too expensive for us, and we would never have managed to carry enough water for the distance to cross by foot. We decided to head back for Kungrad. We crossed the empty, dusty town, and were lucky to bump into the speeding bus. We waved at it, and the bus driver opened the door. It was the same driver as yesterday: his bus leaves early morning to Kungrad, then back to Moynaq in the afternoon. If we had missed it, we would have stayed in town for another 24 hours.
Several days later, we found ourselves in the city of Urgench, an oasis on the Amu-Darya river, a green island between the dry region of Karakalpakstan and the hostile Kyzylkum desert. The city was shaped by large Soviet avenues, tall modern buildings, and green parks composed of monuments chanting the glory of the young Uzbek republic. Its urban greenery is sustained by fountains and water jets. The contrast with Moynaq was blatant. Yet it’s been reported that the water levels of the Amu-Darya are falling, and that Urgench may dry out soon too. Is Moynaq an anomaly in Uzbekistan? Or is it the premise of a water crisis engulfing the country?