Re:Waiting for the sea
by madaxe_again on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @08:38AM
(#9106625)
I visited Aralsk a few years back (it's Aralsk, not Aral - the locals call it Aralsk, the signs all say Aralsk), and it's a gobsmackingly depressing place.
The main industry there is now "sitting and waiting", and the old waterfront is a dismal shadow of a bustling fishing port.
One thing that we found interesting was North Korea's involvement - there are quite a few buildings in Aralsk emblazoned with Kim Il Sung - it turns out they invested in the cotton boom, and provided "labourers" to the USSR.
Tourism is practically non-existent - the only way to get there is a long, long drive (or cycle... we bumped into an Aussie cycling from Shanghai to Dublin (we were en route from London to Bishkek)) through barren desert.
It's hard to see how Aralsk will continue to exist, with or without the return of the Aral, as the population is overwhelmingly old (although we did see a rather extravagant Kazakh wedding parade while there), and levels of corruption in Kazakhstan are pretty astounding, meaning that getting any concern off the ground is a challenge for your average person, unless they happen to be the son-in-law of the local police chief.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when the Baikonur lease is up (most there believe this will happen much sooner than 2050), as it's a major source of revenue for the region, and provides much of the raison d'etre for the surrounding towns and cities. Most people we met between Aktobe and Kyzylorda were either in some way involved in supporting the operations there, or were subsisting, or providing auxiliary services to people directly involved in Baikonur.
One final thing that seems to generally be missing from people's understanding of the Aral sea - it hasn't "dried up", so much as "gone underground" - there's still a vast amount of (severely polluted) water there - if you wander down to the old sea floor, most of it is several-yard-deep mud - very little of it is dusty and dry.
The main industry there is now "sitting and waiting", and the old waterfront is a dismal shadow of a bustling fishing port.
One thing that we found interesting was North Korea's involvement - there are quite a few buildings in Aralsk emblazoned with Kim Il Sung - it turns out they invested in the cotton boom, and provided "labourers" to the USSR.
Tourism is practically non-existent - the only way to get there is a long, long drive (or cycle... we bumped into an Aussie cycling from Shanghai to Dublin (we were en route from London to Bishkek)) through barren desert.
It's hard to see how Aralsk will continue to exist, with or without the return of the Aral, as the population is overwhelmingly old (although we did see a rather extravagant Kazakh wedding parade while there), and levels of corruption in Kazakhstan are pretty astounding, meaning that getting any concern off the ground is a challenge for your average person, unless they happen to be the son-in-law of the local police chief.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when the Baikonur lease is up (most there believe this will happen much sooner than 2050), as it's a major source of revenue for the region, and provides much of the raison d'etre for the surrounding towns and cities. Most people we met between Aktobe and Kyzylorda were either in some way involved in supporting the operations there, or were subsisting, or providing auxiliary services to people directly involved in Baikonur.
One final thing that seems to generally be missing from people's understanding of the Aral sea - it hasn't "dried up", so much as "gone underground" - there's still a vast amount of (severely polluted) water there - if you wander down to the old sea floor, most of it is several-yard-deep mud - very little of it is dusty and dry.