The southern and western parts of Kazakhstan have the flattest wide open spaces one can imagine…the steppes. Also of interest is the Cosmodrome, Aral Sea and historical Turkistan.
Turkistan is located in southern Kazakhstan, and the big attraction in the city is the very impressive tomb of Kozha Akhmed Yasaui, a Turkic Muslim holy man, who became highly revered. The city was an important trading centre at the time he was buried in the town during the 11th century. Timur (Tamerlane), the Turko-Mongol military leader, who conquered the vast area stretching from Turkey to the border of Tibet, had a very grand mausoleum build over the original small tomb of Yasaui. The mausoleum was never actually completed, as Timur died from pneumonia whilst preparing for yet another military campaign. The mausoleum and the associated museum is well worth a visit.
Baikonur, the city located near to the Russian Cosmodrome, was the main reason we travelled west into the vast steppes of Kazakhstan. We timed our visit to coincide with the launch of the Soyuz rocket sending three cosmonauts, two Americans and a Russian, into space. If you have any interest in rockets, then this is a place you simply have to visit. Everything about the place is centred around rockets. We toured a local school, which has its own space/ rocket museum and children learn about space exploration and rockets, apart from the normal schooling curriculum. We were in a small group of half a dozen people and therefore also had an opportunity to climb into the space capsule that was used to blast three cosmonauts into space. The cosmonauts lie on their backs in bucket-like seats in the capsule with their knees pulled right back for the six hour journey to the space lab. Wow, what an adventure.
Part of our visit included watching the huge Soyuz rocket being taken out of the rocket assembly and testing building and being transported very slowly by rail to the launch pad. There were only several hundred visitors and as a result, we were allowed within a few metres of the rocket. It took ages for the rocket to reach the launch pad, a few kilometres from the assembly hall. Everything about the rocket is based on very simple innovative design. A large hydraulic jack lifts the rocket off the rail carriage and sets it on end on the launch pad. Once again, we could stand close-by to watch the proceedings. The other neat thing was that we found the visitors, tourists like us and representatives from NASA and other related US agencies, to be extremely interesting, well travelled and very keen to engage with us and others. We had such a great time meeting and chatting with so many different and knowledgeable people. There are many interesting places to visit at the Cosmodrome and it included a very well presented and interesting museum, the actual house and furnishings used by Yuri Gagarin, the first man to travel into space, the house next door and furnishings of Sergei Korolev, director of the space programme, who ironically spent six years in a hard labour camp during the 1930’s escaping execution (the cagey Russians of course did not tell us about this sad part of a brilliant life), a full scale replica of the Buran space shuttle, and the now abandoned Buran command centre. The Buran is a copy of the NASA space shuttle and only made one unmanned space flight before being abandoned. A couple of Buran space shuttles are rusting away in a huge assembly building at the Cosmodrome, however the secretive Russians said that it could not be viewed because the roof of the building had collapsed…yea right.
On the big night of the launch of the Soyuz rocket, we gathered to watch the brief farewell ceremony of the three cosmonauts. Once again, we were up close and got caught up in the excitement of the moment. The astronauts headed off by bus to be loaded into their space capsule. We moved to the viewing area, only a bit more than a kilometre away from the launch pad. Then it all happened. A flash of flame when the rocket engines ignited, whilst the rocket remained steady for what seemed to be a couple of seconds before relatively slowly lifting off, followed by the very load roar of the rocket engines. Very soon after liftoff, the rocket was immersed in blinding light as it gathered speed. It left a trail of flame as it sped into the night sky, with occasional flashes of light as the various stages of the rocket ignited. This is extreme tourism at its best.
Next up, we travelled to Aral sea, located a couple hundred kilometres north west of Baikonur in western Kazakhstan. The Aral sea, which has no outlet, previously measured about 300km across east to west and 400km north to south and is fed by two major rivers, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya. The latter was called the Oxus River in Greek times and we look forward to seeing more of it when we travel in Uzbekistan. During the 1960’s, the Soviets had the great idea of diverting the waters from the two great rivers and turning the desert green growing melons, rice and cotton. Big mistake. The greatly reduced flow of water into the Aral sea, combined with the high regional evaporation, has led to the sea shrinking rapidly. Today, not-with-standing efforts to save the sea, only about 10% of the sea remains. The once bustling fishing harbours now lie high and dry tens of kilometres from the current water’s edge. Many fishing vessels ran aground or became stranded. During the past several decades, dessert bushes have taken over the original sea bed. It is a crazy sight to find stranded fishing vessels in a desert covered by sea shells. On top of that, the sight was even more crazy for us, finding camels grazing near the stranded fishing vessels. We took a 600km short cut across the desert along the west coast of Aral sea to reach the Uzbekistan border control point, rather than making the 1,400 km trip on good roads via the Caspian sea. Our route, not only being shorter, albeit all on very fine powdery desert track, gave us a better up close view of the lake and offered us the chance to hunt for abandoned fishing ports and to find stranded fishing vessels. It was an epic trip, with hundreds of kilometres not seeing a living soul. We did find several stranded and abandoned fishing vessels. Although these vessels are way off the beaten track, there are signs that scrap metal hunters have been about. You will need to get to the Aral sea soon if you want to see the boats in the desert.
After days crossing the desert, we at last reached Beyneu, a dusty border town, where we could cross from Kazakhstan to western Uzbekistan. The vehicle got a very good wash to get rid of the desert dust. We also decided to find two more 25lt containers to add to our 190lt diesel capacity to deal with the problem of no diesel in Uzbekistan. The locals are well aware of the diesel problem and did not bat an eye lid when we tanked up 230lt of diesel.
