Things to see and do Aralsk

It's hard to imagine, strolling along the empty streets of this city swept by desert sand, that it was once a thriving port city. And yet, during the Soviet era, Aralsk was the main transit center for cotton: produced in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, it arrived in Aralsk loaded onto large ships that crossed the Aral Sea, before being transported by train to Russia. The town of Aralsk itself is home to a small ship cemetery, where the port once stood. A few rusting hulks lie beside panels bearing poems dedicated to the Aral Sea. You can also venture out onto the sand in the harbour, to wander among the rusty plates, engine parts, pieces of ship's hulls... As you go further on, many more silhouettes of beached boats loom on the horizon, some of them truly impressive in size. Since the fish have disappeared, the wrecks have been taken over by cows and camels, which gather along the hulls in the hottest hours to take advantage of the shade. As the sea retreated, other wrecks remained isolated in what is now a desert. Some are visible, notably around the village of Zhalanash, but you need a 4x4 to venture there. As for the wrecks themselves, don't expect to find them whole: many have been cut up to recover their metal parts.

When you ring the museum doorbell, you feel as if you're entering a private home. But the curator, Madi Jasekenov, is always happy to have visitors, and will be invaluable to Russian-speaking visitors. The museum focuses on the history of the city of Aralsk, right up to its decline in the 1970s. The period photos are interesting, and allow you to compare them with the city's current appearance. Don't miss the section devoted to works by artists inspired by the melancholy landscapes left by the disappearance of the sea.

It was here, in Aralsk and Moynaq, that the Russian Revolution was saved. As famine struck Russia, Lenin mobilized dozens of trains and urged the Aral fishermen to increase their production. International aid, which Lenin eventually accepted, also had a lot to do with it, but the Aralsk railway station has preferred to remember this glorious episode in local history through a fresco in the purest Soviet realist style. A must-see.

A hundred kilometers northeast of the small sea lies the Zhamanshin crater, created a million years ago by the impact of a gigantic meteorite, making it one of the most recent and violent on the planet. The crater is almost 15 km long and 300 m deep. The energy released was equivalent to several dozen Hiroshima bombs, and the impact caused fires and smoke that wiped out all plant and animal species within a radius of several hundred kilometers.