Ghost cities and stranded ships: Inside a country that doesn’t exist

It was in a dimly lit, cigarette smoke-filled bar in Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital, where I learnt about the country that doesn’t exist.

“Your country, it doesn’t have its own army, does it?” asked a young bespectacled man with thick-set, black hair on learning I was from Wales. Er, not really, I said. “And does it have its own native currency?” I confirmed it did not. “But it has its own flag? Its own language?” It did indeed. His eyes lit up. “Your country and my country are the same.” I feigned confusion. How were Wales and Uzbekistan the same?

Moynaq, once a fishing port on the Aral Sea, is now a ghost town in the Aralkum Desert, drawing ‘disaster tourists’ to see stranded boats and devastation.Credit: iStock

He slammed his fist down onto the bar, and leaned into me. With a conspiratorial whisper, he said: “Brother, I am not from Uzbekistan. I am from Karakalpakstan.”

I smiled and nodded. But Karakalpak-what? I’d not heard of this other, mysterious Stan country. And in that moment, I wasn’t entirely convinced it even existed.

Yet, on retreating to my hotel and spending hours Googling, I found that far west of Tashkent lay an invisible, autonomous state that takes up over one-third of Uzbekistan’s territory, though accounts for just 2 per cent of its population; somewhere filled with an alternative history, though not present on any map.

The next morning I boarded a train and set out into the unknown, in a direction that would take me to that most unusual of destinations – a non-existent one.

When ethnographers from the Russian Empire arrived in the land that today makes up western Uzbekistan, they recognised the people they found as a distinct and separate ethnicity and nationality. By the time of the Soviet Union, they represented a unique case. While neighbouring countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were promoted to the status of Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), Karakalpakstan held on to the title of Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), leaving it as the only autonomous republic in Soviet Central Asia. While it was incorporated into the Uzbek SSR in 1936, the seeds of sovereignty had already been sewn.

There are differences between Karakalpaks and Uzbeks that transcend the Russian distinctions. Their language is different, coming from a separate branch of the Turkic language family. Their history is different, too. Karakalpakstan was part of the Persian kingdom of Chorasmia – who were Zoroastrians, a fire-worshipping people – for thousands of years while the rest of Uzbekistan escaped its grasp.

On the outskirts of the Kyzylkum Desert that envelopes Karakalpakstan, ancient crumbling cities and forts from this time abound. They rise out of an otherwise flat, lifeless and scorched earth, and were built with supplies from ships coasting along the legendary Amu Darya River, a magical body of water whose banks have borne witness to war and bloodshed, the birth of religions, and history’s greatest civilisations.

Chilpik Dakhma, the most impressive ruin of the Kyzylkum Desert.Credit: Adobe

Chilpik Dakhma is the most impressive of them all. An Avestan (Zoroastrian language) word, dakhma translates to “tower of silence” in Persian – the name for a structure to which Zoroastrian communities traditionally brought their deceased to ward off contamination by demons. Birds of prey, much like the ones that circled above me on climbing its flanks, were thought to help cleanse the perished and ensure their safe passage to the afterlife. It was a sobering thought: there I was, standing at its zenith, where thousands of bodies had once rotted beneath the sun. The only corpses that remained today were cigarette ends and empty cans of coke.

The fortresses are a gateway to Nukus, Karakalpakstan’s capital. I had one mission in the city: to see the Savitsky Art Museum. In 1966, Ukrainian artist Igor Savitsky found in Nukus a place far enough away from Moscow to hide works of art that had been banned under Joseph Stalin: constructivism, Cubism, futurism and neo-primitivism. They would continue to dwell in darkness for the grasp of the Soviet censors was still strong. It wasn’t until 1985, a year after Savitsky’s death, that Perestroika opened up Soviet society and these stunning, daring and beautiful works could finally be seen.

Mizdahkan Necropolis, near Nukus, was founded in the 4th century BC and inhabited for approximately 1700 years, after which it was used as a sacred burial site.Credit: Alamy

Nukus is small, and there’s only so much walking (and drinking of $6 bottles of vodka) that a person can do. I wanted to visit Moynaq, the so-called ghost-town of Karakalpakstan, but getting there is not easy. Public transport is almost non-existent. A local told me that, “in Karakalpakstan, every car is a taxi”. The next day I found myself at the side of the road, hand outstretched, thumb to the sky. It took just five minutes before a man with a mouth full of gold teeth pulled over and implored me to get in.

Fishing once held Moynaq together. Tens of thousands of people lived there in the mid-20th century, making a living from the bountiful waters of the Aral Sea. It was an ancient way of life, now helped by modern machinery. None will have thought that it could have ended just as quickly as it began.

But in the 1920s the Soviets began developing cotton farms across the Central Asian steppes. In the late 1950s, they diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to bolster the industry. In doing so they starved the Aral Sea of its inflows. Within a decade, as much as 25 per cent of it had dried up. By 2010, over 90 per cent of it had disappeared. It has been described as history’s worst human-induced ecological disaster.

Moynaq, the so-called ghost-town of Karakalpakstan, is not easy to reach.Credit: Alamy

Arriving in Moynaq, the scars of this loss were immediately clear. Boarded up houses lined the road. The streets were devoid of life. Few cars were entering: most were leaving in the direction of Nukus. As many as 100,000 people have left Moynaq and its wider district – most for economic reasons, but many because of health complications caused by water contaminated by cotton-industry herbicides and pesticides, and toxic chemicals carried off the seabed into the air. Today, just 13,500 people are left.

It is a mark of our times that Moynaq’s tragic decline is the very reason why people visit it. “Dark tourists” snap photos of what is left of the Aral and the slew of rotting Soviet-era ships trapped in the former harbour. In the summer, the ship graveyard hosts Stihia Festival, an electronic music event which draws 10,000 revellers.

I struggled to imagine that many people in this empty city as I walked towards the graveyard. Near the end of the town a small boy wearing a torn hoodie came over and shook my hand. When I replied “no” after he asked if I had money, he left, only to return five minutes later clutching a 2000 som (24 cents) note, thrusting it into my pocket before running off.

Sands cast into the air by the desert winds twirled and danced around the rusted ships. A pack of starved cows walked by, and on the horizon a herd of camels wandered aimlessly. Sitting on the floor of the seabed, I felt a deep sadness. I don’t know what I’d expected in coming to the place where life disappeared, but it wasn’t this. Moynaq serves as a reminder that life is fragile. What is certain today can come undone tomorrow. Its people are reminded every day of what they have lost. The disappearance of the water has destroyed not only the land, but the way of life it once sustained.

But they continue to exist. Some long for a better future; others believe a divine miracle will one day bring the water back. It sounds hopeless – a futile fantasy. But then again – I thought, as I watched the desert dance and melt under the afternoon sun – if such a thing can happen anywhere, why not here, in this country; a country that doesn’t exist, a country you can’t find on a map; where anything is possible.

The Telegraph, London