Journey to Aral sea. Part 2. Finally, the sea!

Hello, I kindly bring to your attention the second part of my travel photo-report about the two-day journey to the Aral Sea. In a previous post, I talked about how we drove to the coast of the Aral Sea across Sudoch'e Lake.

In the evening of the first day we finally reached the shore of the Aral Sea. The sun was already setting and our drivers wanted to get to the yurt camp before dark.

Therefore, it was better to go reach the camp in daylight.

And we did it! Just before sunset, we arrived to the camp, disembarked and ran to admire the sunset.

The sun went down very quickly and night fell on the camp. The sky was strewn with stars. It is a pity that the camera of my phone did not allow to shoot in the dark - the image was too grainy. We quickly had dinner, sat for a while and chatted around the fire. Later we parted on the yurts. We planned to get up early to meet the dawn. In addition, there were ambitious plans for tomorrow - to visit the Ustyurt plateau and the desert graveyard of the ships. By the way, it would be nice to catch an evening flight back to Tashkent. ;)

I woke before dawn, shivering with cold. During the night the temperature dropped and I had to sleep in pants and a sweater. I think it was about +5 or +6 degrees Celsius. But here over the edge of the sea a radiance appeared and I forgot about the cold, about the inconvenience, about the fact that the yurt smelled like wet skins ...

The whole our group climbed out of the yurt to admire the sunrise ....

While waiting for breakfast, we all wandered around the territory of the yurt camp, taking pictures of the surroundings. In the rays of the rising sun, they were very picturesque ...

After a quick breakfast, we went to the sea

Strange, butonly there I saw and realized the scale of this ecological disaster. When on the eve we were driving along the bottom of the dried sea, I knew with a mind that there was a sea about thirty or forty years ago, and it dried out. But somehow it was all in the background. Like the usual desert, I saw them a lot of times. But now, when we were descending from the plateau to the edge of the sea, it suddenly got through - only two or three years ago it was t the sea right here. Just a couple of years ago, waves were splashing here and a fish was swimming and now here is salt marsh and cracked earth ...

Do you see the wall in the distance? It looks like "the Wall" from Game of Thrones, isn't it? For a few years, it was the seashore. And everything around was filled with water. And now here is the sand ... I must say that this picture did not impress me alone. Many members of the group were really shocked. It's one thing to see it in photos, another thing to see with your own eyes ...

Overcome with sad thoughts, we continued on our way. Two hundred meters from the water, we climbed out and walked — I immediately sensed some unpleasant smell — it turns out that the waves carried thousands and even hundreds of seashells to the shore, which decomposed under the sun. Along the entire coast was a strip of these mollusks.

But what is curious, the unpleasant smell was felt only a few meters from the strip of shells, then there was fresh sea salt air and ... finally, the sea! In spite of everything, the sea is still endless!

The weather was cold, so I did not dare to swim, but a couple of daredevils still got into the water ...

We arrived already late, when the "swimming season" was already over. And in warmer weather, enterprising locals ride tourists in boats and catamarans. Frankly speaking, there are not many tourists here. Most of them are workers at drilling stations, oil and gas companies are scattered along the bottom of the Aral Sea. Also, our citizens prefer to travel mostly to Turkey or Thailand...

Unfortunately, the time has come to say goodbye to the sea and move further on to the Ustyurt Plateau. We loaded into cars and drove a long journey to the Canyon, which is inferior to the American Grand Canyon in size, but not in beauty. About this trip will my next topic.

!steemitworldmap 44.372070 lat 59.411686 long Journey to Aral sea. Part 2. Finally, the sea! d3scr