The Aral Sea

I was heading for the Aral Sea, one of the most potent symbols of how man can wreak utter havoc on his environment through wrong headed thinking. It was another sleeper train journey - in fact the longest of my time in Uzbekistan. The train service in Uzbekistan is good, and it's very cheap - so cheap that I nearly always pay the upgrade price and travel Coupe Class rather than Economy - when I convert it to British money, it's normally an extra five pounds or less to upgrade, it's a no-brainer!

On this sleeper train ride, I would have quite a bit of wakeful travel time the following day, rolling through the desert lands of Karakalpakstan, Western Uzbekistan, and so I'm able to get a good look at what will be the task in hand in April when I return hopefully with my back in better shape, to complete my rtw cycle. It is very barren and sparsely populated - it's going to give up a bit of a challenge - nothing like my Australian Nullarbor Desert challenge (there I had a 14-day stretch between villages, here 2-3 days will be the longest), but it will still be "interesting"!

My destination by train is not the Aral Sea (no trains go there), but the town of Nukus - the main urban centre in the far West of Uzbekistan and main departure point for Aral Sea trips. There is not a lot out here, but one thing does draw a few of the more hardy tourists that make it to this far-flung outpost, to stay around and not head straight for the Aral Sea - the Savitsky gallery.

Igor Savitsky, a Kiev-born Russian started the collection after becoming fascinated by Karakalpakstan when he joined an archaeological dig in the area. He encouraged the locals to preserve and take pride in their cultural heritage (not a particularly popular move in the Soviet era), and even more revolutionary - he managed to amass a collection of the avant-garde art described by the party as degenerate, whilst also gaining funding from the Soviet for the collection! It was probably the closed and remote nature of this, one of the poorest corners of the Soviet Union, that allowed him to fly under the radar of the Moscow authorities.

There are some very nice artworks in the gallery, and the collection of historical and prehistorical artifacts is probably the best presented collection that I've seen in Uzbekistan; but the quality of the pieces in itself is not worth such a long journey. No, what makes this collection particularly fascinating is the context of the collection. Nowhere else is there a collection quite as extensive of both the Soviet approved realism, and the banned avent-garde. The collection represents the entire breadth of artistic output in the Soviet Union in a way no other collection does - the remoteness of the area, along with Savitsky's ability to keep both the locals and local administration on side allowed him to evade the censorship present elsewhere. As such, the museum is a fascinating window onto that particular period and place, and this is the best reason to come here.

The hotel I check into, the Jipek Joli, is the one that all the guidebooks and websites recommend. When I arrive, they only have a more expensive room left, and a single solitary yurt out in their courtyard (half the price of the room). Although I've cycled through the middle of yurt central, and stopped many times for tea or a bite to eat, I have yet to sleep in one (why pay for a big tent when I've got a little one I can stay in for free!). So finally I do the yurt thing. Unfortunately the courtyard is also the main social area in the hotel, so between the late night drinkers arriving back and noisily putting the world to rights, and the early risers making their plans for the day, I (as a light sleeper), don't do so well for sleep.

Rather than head, tired and sore (my back is playing up a little), out to the Aral Sea, I take a rest day, and there is now a cheaper single room available at the guesthouse, so I will get a better nights sleep than my night in the yurt. I also meet Hayley, another transcontinental cyclist and fellow mad-Brit. I'm a little sceptical about her plan - she is heading East towards Beijing. There is a lot of East to go between Nukus and Beijing, and not much of autumn before the vicious Central Asian winter will curl it's icy lips. But, each to their own!

The hotel organise 4wd trips out to Moynaq, the main Uzbekistan town that once dipped it's feet in the waters of the now dried up Aral, and then drive you out across the nothingness for some way, but the prices are proper Western tourist prices ($80 or so for a day trip), whereas the local bus costs 70p/$1. Unfortunately I don't properly think the whole thing through. Of course the 4wd trip is not really worth that much extra; but for not much more than the bus fare, there are shared taxi's heading to Moynaq, just like there are to everywhere in Uzbekistan and I should have taken this option.

I arrive at the bus station just after 10.30am for the 11am bus (having been warned that the bus fills up, and only early arrival guarantees a seat) and stand by the empty vehicle. By 11am there is still nobody, not even the driver. Soon a guy appears with a brush and slowly starts to sweep out the bus. I'm first on, and a slow trickle of people means that by 12:30 the bus is full. But that's only the start of it. Once it's full of people, every nook and cranny is stuffed with all sorts of goods - boxes squeezing leg space and miscellaneous items cramping elbow room. Anyone else that arrives somehow squeezes into the spaces between the now filled spaces. From there the slow moving bus stops at every lamp-post along the way until the narrow aisle is 3 abreast. What could have been a 2-hour journey from hotel front door to Moynaq town takes 6 hours! (and a particularly uncomfortable 6 hours at that).

I arrive just before sunset, dump my belongings at the hostel, and head straight for the ships graveyard at the edge of town. I'm a little late to catch the best light of the setting suns rays, but still get a look around. So, next morning I get up before breakfast and have a proper exploration of the site.

It's a shocking sight to behold. The land is low lying, but from the slightly higher vantage point by a lighthouse, the eye takes in mile after mile of desolation. On an epic scale of destruction, the dusty desert stretches in almost every direction.

Like most people in society, I naturally end up knowing more people with similar liberal, moderate, centrist views to myself on most things, but I like to think I'm not so narrow minded as to block out dissenting voices from my feeds/friendship circles/etc - I am aware of 3 very right wing fb contacts who have unfriended or blocked me because they won't stomach any views other than their own, but I have never blocked anyone because I disagree with their point of view. I do therefore have at least a few friends who have very different views from me on the environment. I really wish they would come here and see what we as a species are capable of. I wish they could meet the people who suffer respiratory problems because of the salts and dusts blown up from the dry seabeds, and I wish they could talk to the farmers and the older ordinary people who remember this place as a green, fertile land. These are facts, undeniable facts, not "opinion" and clearly demonstrate what can happen when we put profit above nature.

Currently it is those towards the right of the political spectrum who are most likely to deny that we need to treat our environment with care (usually because there is some financial gain for them or their cronies), but this particular disaster was the fault of left-wing ideologues, again fuelled by financial gains. The Communist Party were warned very early on that this would happen, but ploughed on regardless - this, like today's environmental follies, is a culpable disaster. 

As the world moves back towards more extreme politics, we are going to see more and more ideological vandalism - the extremes tend to care more about fantasies and ideologies; than reality, pragmatism and expert opinion. It saddens me to see people whose opinions I broadly respect fleeing towards the the political extremes as a counter-reaction to those who are fleeing in the opposite direction - those who embrace Corbyn, in the face of increasing right wing politics, or lean towards Trump because of the most intolerant forms of political-correctness. I can only hope that some of these people come back to the centre before we end up with either an extreme left or extreme right wing dictatorship in the West, because with that will come more Aral Seas, and I fear with that, a bit of ecological vandalism will be one of the least of our problems!

One thing that especially saddens me is the role of those claiming to be fellow-Christians in much of this. That God created such a wonderful finely balanced natural world, with creatures and organisms that interact to support one another in the most amazing way, and set man over it all is a huge privilege for us, the God-appointed guardians of his creation. To misappropriate guardianship with exploitation is a grave folly. When we know that these actions lead to a degradation of God's creation, and to the death of other humans, we commit a sin to continue in such folly. It saddens me no end to see the right wing narrative that short term profit trumps everything else. The bible clearly warns that "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil", and in relation to the environment this is very true.

On the way back from the Aral Sea, I take the quicker option of going in a shared taxi. It is much quicker, but perhaps a little too much! First I take a shared taxi back to Nukus, and another onwards to Khiva. Both drivers decide that they should really be driving for Maclaren or Ferrari, and my life flashes before my eyes on more than one occasion. Not sure what cycling these roads is going to be like with nutters like these guys on the roads when I return this way, once my spine is healthy again. This time I make it alive to my destination - Khiva, ready for the next leg of my adventure.