PROGRAM

1. DAY ONE:
NUKUS - KUNGRAD - USTYURT PLATEAU - LAKE SUDOCHIE - ARAL SEA
(400 km – 7 hrs)

• Visit to Savitsky Museum.
• Departure from Nukus to cross the Ustyurt Plateau on our way to the Aral Sea.
• Stop at Kungrad town: one of the trading centers during the Silk Road period.
• Stop at Lake Sudochie to visit the ancient light house hill and a fishing village, founded in the 19th century by fugitive cossacks, and left abandoned by 1971 when not enough fish was left in the remaining Aral Sea to support a community. You can see the ruins of the hospital, cane houses, and an old fish processing plant. We will talk with some fishermen who still fish there today.
• Stop at the virtually abandoned town of Kubla-Ustyurt. See the emergency airport of the Gas Compressor Station. You can talk with locals, take pictures of the camels and taste camel milk (shubat).
• Aral Sea: 50 km from Kubla-Ustyurt we arrive at the Aral Sea where we can walk on the sea shore and swim if the weather is good. Dinner and overnight stay at the yurt camp.

2. DAY TWO
ARAL SEA - MOYNAK - KHODJELI - GAUR-KALA - NUKUS
(400 km – 7 hrs)

• Early wakeup. Time to take pictures of the sunrise. Breakfast, then departure from yurt camp.
• Kurgancha-Kala. Visit to an old caravansarai of the 14th century, hidden among the hills of the Ustyurt Plateau. On the way back we stop at a cemetery (stone graves) of nomads. Then you can take pictures of the beautiful canyons and collapsed lands. We drive on the bottom of the dried-up Aral Sea.
• Moynak town. Lunch at guest house. Visit to cemetery of ships, local museum. Watch short documentary film about Moynak life in the past.
• Drive to Khodjeli city to visit the Mizdak-Khan architectural complex of the 14th century AD and the ruins of the Gaur-Kala (= "fortress of infidels"), destroyed by Genghis Khan.
• 17:30 Arrival in Nukus.
• 22:20 Return flight to Tashkent.