Showing posts with label Uzbekistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uzbekistan. Show all posts

Friday 14 July 2017

Ships Graveyard in the Desert of Moynaq, Uzbekistan


In Uzbekistan, an eerie ship graveyard filled with hauntingly beautiful shipwrecks beckons, is literally a ghost town in the middle of the desert. Moynaq ship Graveyard — Mo‘ynoq also spelled as Muynak and Moynaq, is a city in northern Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan. It was formerly a sea port, now home to only a few thousand residents at most. Mo‘ynoq's population has been abating precipitously since the 1980s due to the recession of the Aral Sea. Because in the last 30 years Moynaq was one of two biggest Soviet fishing harbors at the Aral Sea. As the scarce few travelers who have traversed this most barren and isolated of landscapes will tell you, it’s perhaps the last place on earth you’d expect to find a flotilla of abandoned ships. Except this isn’t a mirage you’ve reached the Graveyard Ships of Mo’ynaq, a surreal collection of rusting fishing vessels in Uzbekistan, stranded nearly 100 miles from the nearest shoreline.

The Aral Sea has been gradually declining since the 1960s, as the waters of the two rivers feeding it, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, were aimed at irrigating agricultural areas. Actually formerly one of the four largest lakes in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 or 26,300 sq mi. Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since in 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.  In 2007, it had dropped to 10% of its original size, splitting into four lakes! the North Aral Sea, the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea, and one smaller lake between the North and South Aral Seas. Though, in 2009, the southeastern lake had disappeared and the southwestern lake had retreated to a thin strip at the extreme west of the former southern sea.

Moreover, the maximum depth of the North Aral Sea is 42 meter or 138 ft in 2008.The lessening of the Aral Sea has been called "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters". The region's once-prosperous fishing industry has been basically destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic adversity. The Aral Sea region was also heavily polluted, with following serious public health problems. The retreat of the sea has reportedly also caused local climate change, with summers becoming hotter and drier, and winters colder and longer.In an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea, a dam project was completed in 2005; in 2008, the water level in this lake had risen by 12 m or 39 ft compared to 2003. Salinity has dropped, and fish are again found in sufficient numbers for some fishing to be viable.

The Aral Sea watershed covers Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Nowadays Mo‘ynoq's is a major tourist attractions are the armada of rusting hulks that once made up the proud fishing fleet during the Soviet era. Even a one-room museum devoted to Mo‘ynoq's heritage as a center of the fishing industry. Though, poisonous dust storms kicked up by strong winds across the dried and polluted seabed give rise to a multitude of chronic and acute illnesses between the few residents who have selected to remain, most of them ethnic Karakalpaks, and weather unmoderated by the sea now buffets the town with hotter-than-normal summers and colder-than-normal winters. Let's take a closer look and see how these ships came to be stranded in the middle of the desert.

















Wednesday 30 July 2014

The Kalyan Minaret Uzbekistan



Bukhara is one of most attractive and legendary cities of world, where Kalyan minaret is a minaret of the Po-i-Kalyan mosque complex in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. It is most prominent landmarks in the city, which had been captured and destroys several times and restored again. Anyone can get general idea of the city by having upstairs in the Kalyan Minaret situated in the territory of Pio-Kalyan complex. The beautiful minaret actually is designed by Bako, and it was built by the Qarakhanid ruler Muhammad Arslan Khan in 1127 to summon Muslims to offer prayer five times a day. It is made in the form of a circular-pillar baked brick tower, narrowing upwards. 

The minaret is 149.61 ft high and the body of the minaret is topped by a rotunda with 16 arched fenestrations, from which the muezzins summoned the Muslims in the city to prayer. The minaret is also famous as the “Tower of Death” because until as recently as the early twentieth century criminals were executed by being thrown from the top. This is most remarkable sightseeing of Bukhara, which was served as a lighthouse for the caravans going through a desert. 

The Minaret has real greatness, when forces of Genghis Khan entered in the ancient city destroying everything on their way, the great commander's cap fell when he had raised the head to look round the minaret. He said: "Such great that forced me to take off the cap!" Genghis Khan gave credit for its superiority and didn't destroy. There is a brick spiral staircase that twists up inside around the pillar to the rotunda. The tower base has narrow ornamental strings belted across it made of bricks which are placed in both straight and diagonal fashion. The frieze is covered with a blue glaze with inscriptions. 

In the ancient war times, the warriors normally used the minaret as a watch tower to observatory the enemies. The Kalyan Minaret is still dominates the skyline of Bukhara, surprising all who see it with its wonderful and flawless shape. The minaret is famous, and startlingly recent, use was for public execution, where those condemned to die were thrown from the rotunda at the top to the stone courtyard below. The last recognized execution took place in the late 1920,s during the Russian Revolution. If you’re travelling to Bukhara Uzbekistan, then spare lot of time for sightseeing, and we’d be sure you wouldn’t want to miss out the top attractions of Kalyan Minaret.