The fourth day of our journey began at the Jipek Zholy hotel, where we checked in at three o’clock in the morning and prepared a report on the rally. After sitting at the computer until the morning, we went to the Ustyurt plateau. Due to the terrible off-road conditions, our guide recommended leaving the Suzuki SX4 in Nukus and driving a military Mercedes 290GD, which was “borrowed” from the ranks of Uzbek military equipment.
On the fourth day, we managed to go to a small market in Kungrad, visited several picturesque places in Ustyurt, looked at an abandoned fishing village, Lake Sudochye, canyons and the Aral Sea itself.
1. During the day we had to cover about 450 kilometers of road, of which 150 were of disgusting quality, in the end it took us about 12 hours to complete the entire route! Before the trip, we purchased food at the market in Kungrad.
2. Many residents happily took pictures and posed, but there were also those who began to wave their hands at us.
4. We hit the road. After Kungrad, we drove about 10 kilometers along the bottom of the Aral Sea, which left here in the 60s.
5. Then the ascent to the plateau began. With us in the second car were oceanologists - scientists from the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who are working on the problem of the drying up of the Aral Sea and were going to take regular water samples. Among them was Doctor of Geographical Sciences Pyotr Zavyalov, who has been working on this disaster for more than 9 years. In stories about the Aral Sea, we used his materials and articles.
6. Today, the Aral Sea continues to dry up. There was once water at this level...
7. The Ustyurt plateau is located between Mangyshlak and the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay in the west, Aral Sea and the Amu Darya delta in the east. The plateau is a desert with an area of about 200,000 km².
8. From the Aral Sea side, the plateau is indented by hundreds of dirt roads, which can only be driven by a serious SUV. There is no connection here, and we didn’t meet anyone all day. It is extremely dangerous to drive here in one car - in case of a breakdown, there will be no place to wait for help. There have been cases when people died of thirst in the summer or froze in the winter, the weather on the plateau is windy and peculiar, the temperature in winter can drop to -60 degrees!
9. Drying Lake Sudochye and the remains of the abandoned fishing village of Urga. This was one of the places of exile of the Old Believers. In the 60s, the village was abandoned due to the beginning of the Aral disaster, and now all that remains of it is a small Russian cemetery, ruins of houses and a small factory. Now there are trailers of an artel of fishermen who rent part of the lake from the state.
10.
11. Our transport. This is a three-door Mercedes Gelentvagen, an army version. In 1995, he was “written off” brand new from the army of Uzbekistan and now he brings his owner $200 a day.
12. Christian cemetery.
13. Some kind of scribbled stone on one of the hills near the village.
14. Fishermen's boats.
15. And here are the fishermen themselves, who gave us green tea and treated us to stew.
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20. In the 40s of the 20th century, the USSR began implementing an ambitious project to withdraw water for irrigated agriculture from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. Very quickly, the economy of the Central Asian republics soared to unprecedented heights. But after 20 years, success turned into an environmental disaster. Today the amount of water in the Aral Sea is approximately 1/4 of its original volume.
21. According to Pyotr Zavyalov, now the Western Aral Sea is like a powerful chemical reactor. Under conditions of abnormally high salinity - in some parts of the sea it reaches 200 g/l (for comparison, the salinity Dead Sea about 300 g/l), calcium and magnesium carbonates, gypsum and mirabilite fall to the bottom. Another one serious problem- hydrogen sulfide contamination. The hydrogen sulfide zone occupies almost half of the entire Western Aral Sea. Gas fills almost the entire lower layer of water and lies only 10-20 meters from the surface. The concentration of this poisonous gas in the Aral Sea is 10 times more than in the Black Sea.
22. When the sea retreated, the shores began to dry out and collapse, turning into bizarre canyons.
23. This is a small house that stands alone on the cliff of a plateau; anyone can stay there for the night. Inside there is everything you need: dishes, stove, blankets, Koran, carpets, firewood, tools.
24. This house saved the lives of many people.
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26. Salt crystals.
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30. After 450 km we reached our overnight stop - the shores of the Aral Sea.
Enlarge image
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32. Previously, there were Soviet-era barracks here. In the 80s, a coastal supply base for Vozrozhdeniya Island was located at this location. On this island Soviet Union tested bacteriological weapons: the causative agents of anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, plague, typhus, smallpox, as well as botulinum toxin were tested here on horses, monkeys, sheep, donkeys and other laboratory animals.
33. Locals they talk about the sudden departure of the military from Renaissance Island. In the mid-80s, something happened there, and one day all the personnel left the base. The sudden exodus was indicated by the fact that a large amount of equipment, equipment and food was abandoned. And on the runway (there was an airfield with four 3-kilometer runways in the shape of a wind rose) there was a large number of disposable syringes and gas masks. As a consequence, the supply base was also abandoned.
34. The colorful shore of the Aral Sea is beautiful in its own way...
35. We were told that several years ago a famous Moscow photographer
This section is dedicated to the most amazing place on the planet - the Ustyurt plateau. It is probably less studied than the Amazon floodplain or Antarctica. For many centuries, Ustyurt was a crossroads of civilizations, retaining traces of the Scythians, Mongols and more ancient peoples. The routes of great migrations ran along its deserted roads. Since the real development of the plateau by humans is just beginning, it can be considered a kind of historical reserve (sorry not an ecological one).
The attractions of Ustyurt are archaeological sites. In ancient times, ancient caravan routes passed through the plateau, such as the road of the Khorezm Shahs, which connected Khiva with the lower reaches of the Emba and Volga. Along it were located ancient city Shahr-i-Wazir, Beleuli caravanserai and Allan fortress. Ancient cemeteries with majestic mausoleums-mazars are scattered throughout the plateau. Some of them have already been studied by archaeologists, but many are still waiting for their researchers. There are also more ancient monuments. About 60 Neolithic sites are known in Ustyurt.
NATURE OF USTYURT.
The nature of Ustyurt is peculiar and unique. You won’t find such landscapes anywhere else, just like the chinki (steep plateau walls up to 400 meters high). For example, its eastern part from the side of Kungrad and the Aral Sea can be reached by car only in two or three places over hundreds of kilometers. Academician L. S. Berg (1952) attributed the Ustyurt plateau to the subzone of the northern tertiary plateaus of the desert zone of the Turan Lowland. Most of This plateau is covered with vegetation transitional from the subzone of northern (wormwood-salt) deserts to the subzone of southern (ephemeral-wormwood) deserts. In physical and geographical terms, Ustyurt is an independent district of the Mangyshlak-Ustyurt province of the northern desert subzone.
Aeolian landforms, clayey flat spaces, vast dry depressions, and dry beds of ancient and modern temporary watercourses are widespread here. On the surface, in depressions, Quaternary sediments are widely developed, and on the plateau - Tertiary and Cretaceous sediments, mainly marine. Cretaceous deposits are exposed in outcrops - cliffs. Chinks reach a height of several hundred meters. Their colors are surprisingly festive - from pale pink and blue to dazzling white.
can be seen on the pages of the photo album
Summer is hot and long. The average July temperature is 26-28°. IN individual years the temperature reaches 40-60°. The average annual precipitation does not exceed 120 mm; it falls mainly in the autumn-winter period.
Autumn is warm and clear. In some years there are frosts alternating with thaws. Winter is short and warm. Cold period year is characterized by the invasion of air masses from the western spur of the Siberian anticyclone. The average January temperature is -2.5-5°. The snow cover is very unstable and forms in late December - early January. There is little snow; in 50% of winters there is no snow at all. Air temperature in winter time also unstable. On some days of severe winters it drops to -26° and even -41°, and in places with low relief to -45°. Blizzards and ice are common. The average number of days with thaws is 40-45. Winter is also characterized by strong winds and storms.
Spring is fast and fleeting. Frosts stop in early April. Hot, dry weather begins in the second half of May. Moisture reserves in the soil drop sharply, and herbaceous vegetation begins to burn out. There are no permanent watercourses. The existing temporary rivers are classified as snow rivers by their feeding type.
The soils are grey-brown, solonetzic, with layers of gypsum. The soil-forming rocks are Sarmatian limestones. The soil surface is takyr-like, fissured, and hard.
The hummocky-ridged sands are fixed or semi-fixed by various psammophytes and saxaul. Various halophytes are common in salt marshes. The surface of Kenderlisor, formed in conditions of close occurrence of groundwater, is salty silty mud with a constantly muddy surface. The bottoms of concave depressions serve as places of accumulation large quantity chlorides and sulfites up to 10 m thick. At a depth of 0.3-0.7 m, bitter-salty groundwater ("brines") lies.
Nobody particularly protected the fauna and flora of Ustyurt; it was destroyed by predatory means. Many species of animals and plants are listed in the Red Books. The most beautiful animal, the saiga, also suffered from the construction of the century - the Kungrad-Beineu railway line, which cut off its migration routes and was shot from helicopters by the “almighty” Mingazprom and the Ministry of Defense.
more details in the section
RESOURCES OF USTYURT.
Natural resources, especially oil and gas reserves, are enormous and have not been fully studied, and what is found is conserved. total area Ustyurt covers 180 thousand sq. km, including 110 thousand sq. km or more than 60% on the territory of Uzbekistan. The Ustyurt oil and gas region is the largest in Uzbekistan and the least studied. As a result of oil and gas exploration, about 25 oil and gas fields were discovered here. Areas for work have already been allocated to Lukoil, Itera, and Trinity Energy.
The Ustyurt oil and gas region is the largest in Uzbekistan and the least studied. Relatively well-studied zones are characterized by drilling rates from 20 (Kuanysh-Koskalinsky swell) to 25 m per sq. km (Shakhpakhty stage), the rest of the territory is less than 3 m per sq. km, while in other regions of the world with large oil and gas fields this figure reaches more than 100 m per sq. km.
A separate topic is the ecology of Ustyurt and the Aral region. The influence of the Aral Sea is undeniable, but to this day no one knows what the workers of the biological (Vozrozhdeniya Island) and chemical (Zhaslyk) testing sites of the USSR Ministry of Defense buried there. In 1992 they presented a terrible sight. Apartments with broken windows and doors, dishes on the tables. Even new technology with blown up engines on Vozrozhdeniya Island was abandoned, since by this time the level of the Aral Sea had dropped so much that barges from Aralsk could not approach the island.
more details in the sectionThe huge development potential of Ustyurt has not yet been used, although the problems of the entire Aral Sea region can be solved with their rational use.
The Ustyurt plateau is located on the territory of the republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. To this day, this place remains one of the most unexplored on the planet.
The area of Ustyurt is more than 200 thousand km, and the height of the plateau is 180-300 meters. The ground here is dotted with breaks and cracks everywhere, and the cliffs (chinks) bordering the plateau, up to 300 meters high, evoke awe and are reminiscent of pictures of deserted planets from science fiction films. You can climb the plateau only in a few places. The territory is a continuous desert without ponds or permanent rivers. The climate of Ustyurt is extremely harsh and inhospitable: in winter the air temperature drops to - 40 degrees, and in summer sometimes reaches + 60. Local residents say about Ustyurt: “this desert is so empty that you won’t even find an enemy here,” and one expedition of scientists in the sixties 20th century got lost on the plateau and could not be found for 10 days.
In ancient times, the plateau was not deprived of people's attention. Scientists have discovered 60 sites of ancient people of the Neolithic era here, as well as traces of the presence of Scythian and Mongolian tribes. The ancient trade routes connecting Asia with Europe passed through the plateau, including one of the most important branches of the Great Silk Road. Architectural monuments have been preserved here to this day. ancient period, such as the ancient dilapidated arch of the Beliuli caravanserai, the ruins of the once disappearing into the sands impregnable fortress Alan-Kala, great amount burial grounds and cemeteries more ancient period with mausoleums, minarets and underground temples.
The main mystery of the plateau is the so-called “arrows of Ustyurt”. These are ancient structures that archaeologists have never encountered anywhere before. They are displays of crushed stone up to 80 cm high. The base resembles a bag from which two arrows with pronounced tips emerge. Each arrow is 800-900 m long and 400-600 m wide, and they are all directed to the northeast. It is still unclear their exact purpose, because due to their gigantic size arrows cannot be seen from the ground by a man on foot or a rider on a horse or camel. These arrows were discovered only in 1986 during aerial photography.
According to one version, these structures were intended to collect water in these arid regions, according to another, to corral livestock, but there are also more interesting versions.
Thus, archaeologists have established that the arrows were erected much earlier than the emergence of the first human settlements in this area, and the settlements were located south of the mysterious complex. During archaeological excavations, fish skeletons were discovered in this area, which gives reason to believe that there was once a sea here, the waters of which went to the northeast, where the arrows point. Perhaps the arrows indicate the direction of outgoing water. But for whom are these giant signs that cannot be seen from the surface of the earth?
Not far from the arrows, scientists discovered stone figures of animals similar to giant turtles, which were also directed to the northeast, as well as many small pyramids of rough stone, reminiscent Egyptian pyramids. Moving further along in the indicated direction An absolutely straight road made of the same stone was found, laid out in the vast expanses of the desert.
There is a bold opinion that all this stone complex, built by unknown builders from ancient times, is nothing more than a cosmodrome. Science cannot prove whether this is true or not, but even today, events often occur on the Ustyurt plateau. unexplained phenomena, such as bright glows in the sky, mirages appearing during the day and at night, which have been repeatedly observed by local residents and lovers of everything mysterious and inexplicable who flock here.
News and society
The famous Ustyurt plateau is located in Central Asia, occupies a huge territory of almost 200 thousand square meters. m. Moreover, the borders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and a small section of Turkmenistan pass through it. Actually, the name “Ustyurt” in the Turkic translation sounds like “plateau”.
A wonderful natural creation
Geologists suggest that at least 20 million years have passed since the appearance of the plateau. However, only at the end of the last century, in the 80s, scientific world became interested in Ustyurt. Expeditions to the Ustyurt plateau were organized several times. People wanted to collect as much information as possible about this magnificent place.
The neighbors of this giant natural creation are:
- on the western side - the Mangyshlak Peninsula and the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay (translated as “Black Mouth”);
- in the east - the irrevocably drying Aral Sea, the delta of the Amu Darya River.
Bozzhira
The dimensions of the Ustyurt plateau are impressive, different places its height ranges from 180 to 300 meters. Sometimes you come across steep 350-meter ledges - ledges that rise above the adjacent plain.
The southwestern part of the plateau called Bozzhira is considered the highest. It consists of rocky ridges, hills (ridges) with almost even outlines.
Ancient arrows of the Ustyurt plateau
The Bozzhiry area is incredibly beautiful, it can compete with the famous Monument Valley (USA). The only thing that distinguishes these amazing corners of the planet from each other is the number of tourists. Unfortunately, few of them have heard about the existence of this pearl of Ustyurt. It is worth studying Kazakhstan on a map of mountain ranges to appreciate the scale of this place.
Video on the topic
Distant past of the plateau
More than 21 million years ago, the plateau was deep underwater. In that distant era, there were two huge continents on Earth - Laurasia and Gondwana. They were separated by the Tethys Ocean. The disappearance of the ancient sea that was integral part ocean, occurs in the first half of the Cenozoic. The pace of this process accelerated approximately 2 million years ago, after the Caspian and Black Seas separated.
Found in the limestone of Ustyurt seashells, which confirms the hypothesis put forward. In addition, there are a huge number of ferromanganese nodules, which are similar in size and shape to billiard balls. Not everyone will guess that the spherical formations scattered across the entire surface of the plateau were formed under sea conditions. The water gradually eroded the dolomite and limestone rocks, but the ferromanganese nodules emerged stronger and only acquired rounded outlines. I can’t believe that the Ustyurt plateau is located in Kazakhstan. Local residents are proud of this landmark.
Indescribable beauty
The relief with a flat surface is a desert. In some places the soil is dominated by clay, in others there is a clay-rocky surface. In addition, there are areas that are sandy or with small gravel. The desert gives way to cracks or rocks consisting mainly of chalk. You involuntarily feel as if you are on the surface of a lifeless planet or are present on the set of a Hollywood film of the same format. The Ustyurt plateau attracts the attention of many tourists and photographers who photograph landscapes.
The true beauty of the chalk cliffs comes when the sun rises or sets. At these moments, a wonderful sight opens up: the rays give the usually white rocks reddish tints. At noon they become slightly bluish. If you appreciate natural attractions, then be sure to visit the Ustyurt plateau (Kazakhstan).
Representatives of flora and fauna inhabiting the plateau
Regarding flora and fauna, it is worth noting the following. There is nothing here that could surprise a tourist. Such representatives dominate flora, like wormwood and saxaul. In the more favorable spring period, which does not last long, flowers appear and the picture becomes brighter.
The fauna is more diverse. All those species that have adapted to life in steppes and deserts are present. The climatic conditions on the plateau are favorable for reptiles, which are represented by lizards, snakes and turtles. Small rodents (jerboa, gopher, marmot, gerbil), hedgehogs and hares have settled well. This is despite the fact that each of them is potential prey for a wolf, fox or caracal. The cheetah, which is a rare species and therefore protected by law, is doing well. The shy saigas are considered the pride of Ustyurt. Unfortunately, their population is in critical condition. Of the artiodactyls, argali are also found.
On the Chink rocks, vultures and eagles froze in majestic poses, proudly watching everything that was happening below on the plain. There are birds familiar to Europeans - pigeons and sparrows. Inhabited in to a greater extent Ustyurt plateau snakes. Therefore, tourists should exercise caution when walking on rocky terrain.
Another feature of the Ustyurt plateau is the large population of feral horses. Once upon a time, nomadic Kazakhs bred these domestic animals on local farms.
Water and winds
Water on the plateau is considered scarce as natural reservoirs have long disappeared. All rivers and lakes had dried up. Dry riverbeds and salt marshes testify to their existence in ancient times. The winds in Ustyurt have complete freedom, because on the plateau there are no natural barriers in the form of mountains and forests.
This affects the state of karst rocks and leads to soil erosion, which, in turn, leads to a gradual change in the boundaries of the Ustyurt Plateau itself.
Mysteries around the area
During the Middle Ages, Ustyurt was on the route of caravans that departed from the city of Khorezm, and then moved to settlements on the shores of the Caspian Sea and the lower reaches of the Volga River. In other words, the Great Silk Road passed along it. There are many artifacts left that confirm that trading people visited the plateau very often. These are, for example, the remains of cemeteries and underground temples. Settlements were established, even cities with visiting yards for caravans (caravanserais) and all the infrastructure. The ruins of one of these cities called Shahr-i-Wazir remained in good condition.
At the end of the 70s of the last century, an airplane flying over the plateau carried out aerial photography. On the surface of the plateau were identified mysterious images, something like arrowheads pointing to the northeast. Figures triangular shape They are quite impressive in size, their sides reach 100 meters in length. Unknown craftsmen used crushed stone to create giant “arrows” on the ground. Apparently, they contain some kind of sacred meaning. Scientists have not yet given a clear and unambiguous answer to this question.
There are holes dug in the ground near each corner. They may have stored water. In addition to these “arrows,” other figures were later discovered, in particular warriors, pyramids and turtles, which were also made of stone. “Arrows” on the plateau can be safely classified in the same category of historical mysteries as the famous images in the Nazca desert.
Be sure to visit Ustyurt when arriving in Kazakhstan. The map of the area shows exactly where this natural attraction is located.
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First release of the Kazakh-language version popular science magazine National Geographic, recently presented in Aktau, is dedicated to the nature of the Mangistau region. In particular, the Ustyurt plateau is one of the most beautiful and most mysterious places region.
"Ustyurt, a table plateau, between the Mangyshlak peninsula in the west, the Aral Sea and the Amu Darya delta in the east. Height up to 370 meters. Bounded by steep cliffs - cliffs (150 meters or more in height). Wormwood-salt desert. Oil and gas field" (Soviet encyclopedic Dictionary, 1988).
Photo by Andrey Astafiev
Gas stations for UFOs
Death Mounds
The military was blown away like the wind. Just a couple of hours ago, here, in the field camp near the Kentykty well, a strictly controlled and active life was in full swing, but incomprehensible to the local environment. Heavy trucks, tightly covered with tarpaulins, drove up and drove off. People in protective uniforms were scurrying about, machine guns were knocking from helicopters, chasing the frightened saiga to death in low-level flight. The fires of the camp kitchen were smoking. At the mouth of a well drilled by a field self-propelled unit, some strange instruments were crackling.
Suddenly the ground shook, it swelled like a giant abscess and burst. A tall geyser splashed out into the sky, faded from the merciless sun. The instruments howled and chattered like rattles gone crazy.
A few minutes of ominous silence - and the flight began. The military jumped into trucks, climbed onto helicopters, and all this equipment immediately disappeared over the horizon.
And then people came from nearby transhumance pastures and began to take away everything that the fleeing military had abandoned in haste and panic. Tents, field kitchens and electrical installations, food from a military warehouse, cups, spoons and plates with half-eaten stew from plank tables, these tables themselves. And also incomprehensible instruments that switched from an outrageous screech to a frequent, but already quite acceptable for the shepherd’s ear, accustomed to the silence of the desert.
Those who were more curious climbed onto the 30-meter-high mound that swollen up in place of the well, looked into the crater, shook their heads and muttered something about Satan turning the stone core of the earth inside out.
Few of these people are still alive today. Some died of age, some were carried away even earlier by a strange disease, previously unknown in these places, which in a few years turned strong and flourishing men into walking skeletons.
Only later, during the intensification of the Semipalatinsk - Nevada movement, it was established that in Ustyurt, in the area of the Buzachi Peninsula, where the largest oil and condensate fields in Kazakhstan - Kalamkas and Karazhanbas - are currently being developed, the military produced three underground nuclear explosion. IN strategic goals. It was assumed that in the gigantic voids formed after such explosions and limited by limestones fused from atomic heat into mirror-smooth volcanic glass, fuel reserves and drinking water in case of global war.
Two explosions went off more or less safely, but during the third there was a release. So the soldiers fled. Tea, these are not “cult-personal” times to die from radiation sickness for the Motherland, for Stalin.
One of these three mounds with a dome that has collapsed right down to the damn nuclear kitchen is still “siphoning” at several thousand microroentgens per hour.
God has cursed this land
In general, the military has been playing around here since time immemorial. And it’s hard to say what other memory they left about themselves at the ravines and in the tracts of Ustyurt. A local archaeologist, an employee of the regional historical and local history museum, Andrei Astafiev, has more than once found missile fragments and the remains of military aircraft on the plateau. He also descended into one of the craters left behind by the creators of underground strategic storage facilities. The one, of course, that now rings within relatively safe limits.
The economic development of these wild and desert places is still hampered by harsh climatic conditions, lack of water and their remoteness from the centers of civilization. If you try to cross the plateau by car, you need to do it in a very reliable vehicle, with a good supply of fuel, food, and most importantly, water. The length of this flat hill is 500-600 kilometers, and you can drive right through it without encountering a single car, not a single living thing, human soul. So if your car breaks down, this fact can grow into a very serious problem.
Once upon a time, back when Aktau was in the status of a secret mailbox, this city (then Shevchenko) was practically cut off from Mainland. The only way to get out of here was by sea or by air. Or along a single-track railroad, the brainchild of a Komsomol shock construction project (in these places there is even a village called Komsomolsk-on-Ustyurt, on the territory of Kalmykia), but in such a roundabout way and with so many stops waiting for an oncoming stagecoach that walking will be faster. In those days, the profession of “caravan bashi”, a person who drove convoys of cars on Mainland, and this path passed along the very edge of Ustyurt. But somehow a certain brave man decided to go this route with his wife and little son in his “Zaporozhets” and lost his way. They were searched for by helicopters for several days. In the end, they found only the abandoned Zapor, and not even a bone was found from its crew.
In summer, the thermometer here goes over 50 degrees in the shade. In winter it gets cold up to minus 50 and above. Yes, all this in a fierce, drying wind in the heat, icy wind in the cold. During the year, 100-120 millimeters of precipitation falls on this god-damned land. Moreover, evaporation is 10-15 times higher than this volume.
Photo by Taimas Nurtaev
Fata Morgana you can touch
And yet there are people who rush to these lands as if to the promised land. Although such eccentrics are few and far between. Geologists and archaeologists, naturalists and game managers, artists and photography masters. And also amateur ufologists. Here you can see, meet, touch something that is not found anywhere else in the world.
The richest deposits of fossils containing almost the entire periodic table. The oldest sites in Kazakhstan and the CIS, and if you look hard enough, perhaps all over the world primitive man, almost incorruptible settlements preserved, mounds of Sarmatian and Scythian burials still untouched by human hands. The remains of caravanserais of one of the branches of the Great Silk Road, through which gigantic caravans once passed, composed not even of hundreds, but of thousands of camels. Wells, up to 50 meters deep, manually dug by the Kuduksha ancestors in limestone, several at a time in one cluster. The famous Soviet-era hit, Uch-kuduk, comes from these places. There was a time when people willingly settled in these then very fertile lands in an ecological sense.
Photo by Andrey Astafiev
And despite the apparent scarcity of local flora and fauna, you will find in Ustyurt dozens of endemic species and relics of the most ancient representatives of the flora and fauna, listed in the Red Book. Here there is a shrub called "soft-fruited", which hundreds of thousands of years ago quenched with its berries the thirst of a relic like it - the Saiga antelope and some Neanderthal dressed in the skin of a cheetah. The beast, alas, is still within the memory of the current generation, having disappeared from Ustyurt forever about thirty years ago.
Here you can see clearly cut out in the background blue sky silhouette of a steep-horned mouflon trampling with its hoof the spurs of the Ustyurt cliffs. Here a saker falcon strikes from above, like lightning, a gaping corsac or jerboa. And even skinny, like egyptian mummy, wolf.
Photo by Andrey Astafiev
And just recently, some few million years ago, evil sharks were rampant here. Whose teeth, jaws and even entire skeletons are still found embedded in the limestone cliffs of the plateau. Well, yes, the Tethys Ocean during the ancient Triassic stretched its waters over a gigantic territory before breaking into the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black and Aral seas.
Well, artists and photographers are drawn here by the fabulous Fata Morgana. Which you can not only sketch, but also photograph. And even touch it with your hands.
When, tired of the monotonous and empty plain, the gaze suddenly stumbles upon quaint castles, palaces or giant, clearly unearthly animals, the first thought is: this is a mirage. But you come closer and see: no, he does not disappear, but becomes more and more clear and visible.
Lord, what kind of miracles has the sorceress nature created on these meager lands. Wind, sun, and frosts carved such bizarre structures and sculptures from soft limestones that, even touching them, you cannot believe that human hands and his genius were involved here.
Game warden Viktor Konyashkin from the village of Sai-Utyos at one time aptly dubbed this entire stone architectural and biological exhibition, built by nature, “the devil’s workshop.”
Apart from aliens, no miracles
But some people think that aliens are also frolicking here. In 1979, ufologist Galdynbeg Satikov saw a UFO over the dead clay debris of Soksor. This observation of his is recorded in the relevant annals of world ufology.
How many such observations have not been recorded by anyone?
In particular, the head of the department of the local museum of ethnography and local history, Lidia Bychkova, saw, in her words, something like a flying saucer twenty years ago during tourist trip, where I went to Ustyurt with my eighth-grader son and his school friends.
Photo by Taimas Nurtaev
The best alien landing site in the world
We were sitting by the fire,” she recalls, “and suddenly we saw how three bright lights, arranged in a triangle, separated from the ledge of the canyon located opposite us. They hung in the air for several minutes and with incredible speed, but completely silently, flew away towards the center of the plateau.
And the already mentioned game warden Konyashkin, chuckling, says that he saw these flying, as he put it, “pans” over Ustyurt 20 times, but only in Soviet times. And he suggests that it was perhaps some new military equipment, tested in these deserted places by the USSR Ministry of Defense. Although the pathfinder does not exclude alien origin these objects.
Photo by Alexander Tonkopryadchenko
True, the archaeologist Andrei Astafiev mentioned above did not see anything like this in Ustyurt. Although, according to him, it is difficult to find a place more suitable for landing aliens on the whole Earth. But he, and in a big good company, once saw something like a UFO over the city of Novy Uzen (now Zhanaozen). Moreover, this object at the same time was visible from Shevchenko (now Aktau), although the distance between these cities is about 180 kilometers. Then the author of these lines saw this incomprehensible thing. And in Ustyurt, specifically on the Buzachi Peninsula above the Kalamkas deposit, I once had the opportunity during a salt storm to observe dozens of very rarely, they say, naturally occurring ball lightning, jumping like crazy among industrial structures and high-voltage wires.
By the way, about ball lightning. One local researcher, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences Gennady Tarasenko, has developed an entire theory proving that huge accumulations of giant nodules (spherical volcanic formations) scattered throughout Ustyurt are nothing more than gas stations for UFOs. In his opinion, nodules are repositories of ball lightning, created by the scientific thought of aliens in prehistoric times. And alien ships are constantly refueled with free energy from these same balls.
If you want to live, don't shoot saigas
Someday Ustyurt and Mangyshlak in general will probably become a place of pilgrimage for tourists from all over the world. In the meantime, only a few daredevils come here. Moreover, such trips do not always end well. A tragic accident occurred, in particular, in Ustyurt about 20 years ago with the then Ambassador of Germany to the Republic of Kazakhstan Andreas Körting, who, by the way, was accompanied on the trip by the above-mentioned archaeologist Andrei Astafiev. Andreas and his wife, amateur ornithologists, went to the plateau to look at rare birds. At the end of the day we stopped and prepared a barbecue. And... while eating, the ambassador choked on a piece of meat. Andrey Astafiev and the jeep driver Igor Kazakov did everything to pump out the instantly fallen into clinical death German, and eventually were able to start his heart and breathing. They took him to the nearest hospital, to Novy Uzen. From there, on the same day, he was taken to the best German clinic by a German helicopter. But even ten years later, doctors were still unable to bring Körting out of his state of deep coma. As a result, he was disconnected from the ventilator.
Photo by Andrey Astafiev
Rumor claims that a German guest allowed himself to shoot a saiga not far from the underground mosque of a local saint, the builder of this and a dozen other similar temple structures, Beket-ata, which is cut into one of the cliffs of the plateau. So he was punished for this. However, the guide and driver refute this version of the event: the saigas’ guest did not shoot.
One way or another, this accident added another dark touch to mysterious story Ustyurt.
