The Inconsistent Traveller

(Karakalpakistan Part 1)

About four months ago, I ranted at length on this site about my rather vehement dislike (some might say ‘pathological hatred’) of beaches. And although I got a few interesting replies/rebuttals – which I enjoyed and appreciated – nothing much has changed in the relationship between me and beaches. Which is to say that I still loathe them every bit as much as I always have.

however …

I do have to go back on one aspect of my rant, and it has to do with sand. I remember writing that it’s basically dirt made of silicon (which is true), and that it’s extremely annoying when it transfers itself from the beach to your shoes, your underpants etc. (also true), and that I can’t quite work out why people pay such ridiculous sums of money to go and lie on it, surrounded by thousands of others doing the same (super-true with sparkles).

Then today, as I was walking up a deserted hillside towards an abandoned 3,000-plus-year-old fortress in the Kyzylkum desert of Karakalpakistan (as one so often does), I had the following thought:

“You know, I really love the sand here.”

Let me preface my explanatory ramble with some detail about what I was doing in Karakalpakistan and, incidentally, where the hell Karakalpakistan actually is.

Yuliya and I are on holiday in Uzbekistan at the moment, staying in fabulous Khiva – the beautifully preserved Silk Road oasis town hidden in the desert beyond the Amu-Darya river basin, whose mud-brick city walls and sumptuous majolica-tiled madrassas transported me far from reality on my first visit here in 2009*.

Khiva is the capital of Khorezm, one of two main regions in far western Uzbekistan. The other region – separated by the one of Central Asia's two largest rivers, the Amu-Darya – is Karakalpakistan. The name comes from its inhabitants the Karakalpaks, who are (more or less) a sub-group of the Uzbek people.

In travel guides and on Central Asia-related websites, the word "Karakalpakistan" tends to crop up most often in proximity to phrases like “ecological disaster”, “blighted landscape” and “respiratory disease”. It lies adjacent to what is now the Southern Aral Sea, which was created not long ago when the level of the original Aral Sea dropped something like 70 metres and the whole thing split into two separate halves. The northern Aral, in Kazakhstan, is being slowly restored to its former level via a series of dam projects, while the southern part, in Uzbekistan, is expected to disappear completely some time in the not-too-distant. Its legacy will be … well, nasty.

Geographically, large parts of Karakalpakistan are basically uninhabited desert, and walking around in these expanses, you see evidence of the Aral disaster everywhere. A fine powder of sea salt covers the ground almost entirely in some areas, blown here from the dehydrated seabed. Periodically, desert windstorms whip this white invader into stinging airborne clouds that can find their way into your lungs and do some pretty horrible damage there (hence all the reports of respiratory problems).

Elsewhere the sodium beast has attacked lakes like the formerly pretty Ayaz Kol, which has now fragmented into a series of pools with bone-white, boggy shorelines. Walking around the edges of these is a really weird experience; there is no wildlife of any

kind, the area is completely silent, the white powder has mixed with greenish mud to create something not entirely unlike quicksand, and bushes growing in the shallows are so thickly covered with waterlogged salt that they’ve taken on the appearance of dead coral.

Seen on the horizon from a few kilometres away, the entire lake appears to be either a hazy mirage, or a deserted beach (there’s that word again) with white-crested waves breaking on its shores. But of course, there are no waves in Ayaz Kol. The water barely moves at all, and neither does anything else.

Like I said … weird.

Actually, though, I didn’t start this rant with the intention of recounting the tragedy of the Aral Sea disaster; that's been done elsewhere. It's just my inability to resist a good tangent, getting in the way as usual. Let's get back to the sand.

Another, less foreboding word that you'll often see printed in close proximity to "Karakalpakistan" is "fortress". That's because the desert which I mentioned before – called Kyzylkum, meaning "red sands" – is home to an impressively large collection of ancient forts ... and when I say "large" and "ancient", I really mean "LARGE" and "aaaaancient".

First to deal with the LARGEness factor: one commonly visited area of the Kyzylkum is called Eliq-Qala, which means "fifty fortresses", and you can see them dotted around the map in clusters. But in actual fact, the name is a misnomer – archaeologists believe that there may be as many as two thousand of them yet to be discovered. Which basically makes this area one huge archaeologists' paradise.

About "ancientness" ... well, Yuliya and I hired a driver to tour four or five of these fortresses, and we started with Toprak-Qala and Qyzyl-Qala. The first of these was a mere babe, having been the main HQ for the Kings of Khorezm in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD, while its neighbour was a tad more mature at roughly 1,800 years old. Later, though, we came to Ayaz-Qala, a complex of three fortresses which some sources say has been in use for – get this – about five thousand years**.

Exactly who built and used these incredible structures varies from fort to fort. A number of them belonged to the ancient Zoroastrians (or "fire worshippers", as they're called in these parts), including one where bodies used to be hung out in the open air to be picked by vultures (a Zoroastrian tradition for millennia). The aforementioned Khorezmian kings were also rather keen on fortress-building and -dwelling, and they contributed quite a few to the collection, while other forts were inhabited by early Christians. And there are probably some which had different owners and uses ... it isn't entirely clear in every case.

Our guide's commentary as we walked around the first two fortresses was rather minimal, and he didn't even bother to join us at the others, so we got no information at all. I found this a little disappointing at the time, but I later realised that his sparse explanations arose from a simple fact: namely, that this area is only now opening up to the enquiries of archaeologists, and many secrets of the little-known cultures who lived here are ... well, little-known. Therefore, there wasn't much that our guide could really say! We were looking at the pieces of a vast historical mystery.

Cool, huh?

Anyway, it was while walking up the hill towards the outer walls of Ayaz-Qala that I had the thought about sand. It was about a 20-minute walk through terrain that had looked fairly unremarkable when seen through a car window, but when I got up and close and personal with the desert here, I found myself in awe of it. Aside from the broad, horizon-to-horizon skies and the twisted, spiny vegetation, there was the sand itself. A rich pinkish-yellow colour for the most part, it rippled slighty on the ground, and at the crest of each ripple seemed to be a little sprinkling of gold dust. It was truly beautiful sand.

(Also, it was soft and comfy to walk on.)

So yeah ... hence my need to go back on what I said about sand. It really wasn't fair, and I realise that now.

When we crested the hill and entered the main compound of Ayaz-Qala (which was being guarded by an eagle, soaring overhead), we had the entire fortress to ourselves.

Like so many of Uzbekistan's amazing sights, I found myself amazed not only at the place, but also at the lack of tourist throngs. "Why the Hell isn't this more famous?", I asked myself – for about the eight-millionth time since first visiting this country two years ago. But y'know, although a bit more tourism would undoubtedly benefit the Uzbek people, from a selfish p.o.v. it's a wonderful privilege to come here and check out the great secrets hidden in Uzbekistan's deserts and oases ... which may be one reason why I'm already thinking about the possibility of coming back for a third bite of the cherry )))

Our last fortress for the day was the impressive Qirq Qyz-Qala, which translates as "Fortress of The Forty Girls". These groups of girls are one of several recurring motifs in Uzbek legend – so much so that there's another Fortress of Forty Girls in Termez, near the southern Tajik border. Both that one in Termez and this one in Karakalpakistan are claimed as the home of a 16-year-old warrioress called Gu'layim. The story goes that she built the fortress herself, then trained forty virgins to become a formidable combat squad who would (and did) defend it against all comers.

Of course, the wisdom of choosing young virgins as your defending force – as opposed to, say, experienced and well-armed professional soldiers – could be questioned, but on the other hand, "Fortress of The Forty Big Dumb Guys with Spears" doesn't strike quite the same poetic note. So each to her own, I guess.

As it turns out, this legend has even migrated internationally over the years, and popular etymology attributes the country name "Kyrgyzstan" (which neighbours Uzbekistan to the east) to the same story – only in that version, a dog somehow gets involved with the forty girls. There used to be a brand of dog food in Australia called "Lucky Dog" ... wonder if that's where they got the inspiration for the brand name ;-) 

Btw, now that I'm on the 'popular Uzbek legends' theme, let me throw in an even more irrelevant tangent.

Here it is: the other big recurring plotline in this corne of the world revolves around an architect commissioned by a powerful ruler to build a spectacular structure – a mosque, say, or a minaret. The ruler orders the project to begin, then goes off to battle, and while he's absent his master architect falls in love with his beautiful wife. After committing a mild romantic indiscretion, such as asking the ruler's wife for a kiss, the architect starts fearing for his life, and so sets about making a pair of wings for himself and jumping off the top of his own building, flying away to Persia to avoid the wrath of the returning Khan or Emir. It seems like every Uzbek city has one of these naughty flying builder guys somewhere in its 'history'. Must've been the thing to do back then.

Anyway, about the fortress: its size is just immense, but it's in a far more advanced state of ruin than Ayaz Qala, to the point where every structure except sections of the outer wall have melted back into the desert. So now you basically walk on a wide raised plateau, with dissolving fortifications adding slightly surrealistic contours to the horizon. It's, er ... pretty damn cool )))

Believe it or not, though, what I've told you so far is only about half of our little Karakalpak adventure. For the sake of giving you (and my fingers) a break, I'll tell you the rest a bit later. Until then ... Khaer!!

(That's "bye" in central Uzbek.)

  

* Btw, if you want to read my original rant about the wonderful city of Khiva, it's here:

   http://rantingmanor2.blogspot.com/2009/07/khan-you-believe-it.html

(** Of course, like a lot of stuff around here, the figures change depending on who you talk to.)