Welcome to the banks of the Aral Sea, circa 1965.
Don’t see any water, huh? It's amazing what 40 years of draining does. The sea bed looks like a Mexican landscape, until you step on the soft sand and see little clam shells scattered everywhere, bleached by the intense sun.
Numerous boats became stranded in the sand; a few rusted hulls remain, but most have been chopped up and sold to China as scrap metal.
A gaggle of boys ran with our caravan through the hot sand. They begged us for our drinking water and food.
Myunak once was a thriving coastal town for fisherman and tourists. It is now impoverished and most inhabitants are subsistence farmers.
