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Karakalpakstan is a mouthful to say, one which has to be said a bit slowly so your friends don’t mistake you for saying Pakistan, but there’s no mistaking this land of nomads, deserts, and surprises for anything other than what it is once you arrive.
Karakalpakstan has many monikers but they all follow the same pattern: a ‘Stan’ within a ‘Stan’, a republic within a republic, a nation within a nation. Depending on the political winds of the future, the citizens here may soon be called a people without a nation, but for now, this distinct ethnic group living inside Uzbekistan is still the only part of the country that enjoys regional autonomy.
Owing to its Sogdian and Silk Road origins, Uzbekistan is one of the more diverse of the Central Asian republics, and the Karakalpaks embody this diversity with their distinct physical features, distinct language, and distinct landscape.
There are basically three reasons to visit this part of Uzbekistan for the tourist, and every guide and article on Karakalpakstan available today highlights them first above all others. These are the disaster areas of the Aral Sea, the desert fortresses of Khworezm, and the Savitsky Museum of Russian Avant-Garde art.
Until Lonely Planet guidebooks and Instagram came about, this place probably saw very few visitors despite these three marvels. Karakalpakstan was off the traditional Silk Roads, and had a reputation as mostly a wasteland thanks to the shrinking of the world’s fourth-largest inland water body to something like one-6,000th of its natural size.
But surprises await the traveler around every corner in Karakalpakstan, if they only place themselves in the positions to experience them.
Life from death
Karakalpakstan’s capital city is called Nukus, and it’s a basecamp for visiting the Aral Sea, which has now become a vegetated desert called the Aralkum (Aral Sand).
The Aral Sea was a saline lake of 68,000 square kilometers in size fed by the two mightiest rivers in Central Asia, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. These were diverted (more the former than the latter) to furnish the water for a cotton industry that supported the textile needs of the whole Soviet Union, and so great was the plant’s thirst that over just 20 years the Aral Sea shrunk to a fraction of its original size. By 1986 the damage was done, and the region was debilitated by health effects from salt spreading on the wind and toxic fumes released from the seabed.
The sea kept shrinking until just a few thousand square kilometers of water remained spread between two lakes, with the consequences being that Central Asia is now one of the most water-stressed regions on Earth. There are two tour operators that take visitors there, and your hotel will likely have both on speed dial. The tour program features all kinds of varied sites, but there is one feature you should see about requesting specifically.
International development assistance has cultivated a fishing industry on the sea’s remnant. Out in the most otherworldly, hellish landscape of muddy salt flats, groups of fishermen ride about on fat-tire vehicles straight out of Mad Max. These men are local brine shrimp fishermen, an animal farmed in the lake for its eggs which can fetch around $20-$40 per kilogram.
They are quite literally creating life from death, a decent living from a dying sea. Visiting them and watching them work is possible and will leave a lasting impression of resilience, both of human and animal life, that has to be seen to be believed.
The Savitsky Museum
Where would you think to look to find the world’s largest collection of early Soviet modern art? If you said Moscow or Saint Petersburg, you’d be wrong. It’s all the way down in the deserts of Karakalpakstan at the Savitsky Museum, also known as the Uzbekistan National Museum of Modern Art in the Desert.
Why are the Russian pioneers of Cubism and other early modern art stylings found here? Because of the actions of a single man—in the right place at the right time, and of the right moral character. Long story short, the collection of hundreds of paintings on canvas and cardboard is found here because painter, collector, and amateur excavator Igor Savistky quietly defied an order from Joseph Stalin to destroy all modern art in the Soviet Union predating his rule.
Oktyaber Dospanov has worked in the museum faculty for 45 years and got his start in the world of culture from Savitsky himself.
“In 1979 I started my studies, and my group of about 25 people went to the Nukus museum to see the exhibitions, and Savitsky showed us,” Dospanov told WaL. “He explained about art, about history, and I had a lot of questions, so we started off with a good relationship”.
Born to a fishing family in the town of Moynaq that once straddled the Aral Sea, where 4x4s regularly bring tourists to see the abandoned fishing fleet rusting away in the desert sands where they dropped anchor for the last time more than 50 years ago, Dospanov took up archaeology as a student under Savistky.
“In November I accompanied him on an archaeological expedition, and when we got back he asked me ‘Would you like to work in the museum?’ and I said ‘Of course!” he remembered.
One can only imagine all the cities and towns across the Soviet Union where such an opportunity would have been utterly impossible, but Central Asia had long been the Orient for Russia, and its porticoed teahouses and bazaars were an irresistible attraction to the post-revolution, pre-Stalin Avant-Garde who left their homes strewed with depictions of that frontier world, hundreds of which Savitsky snapped up.
Stalin saw the early modern art as non-Stalinist, and therefore a danger to his rule or some other nonsensical notion. He ‘created’ a new post-Lenin modern art movement to better homogenize art in the communist world, but Savitsky wasn’t interested
Walking through the halls of the museum’s exhibitions, the mind struggles to fit what it’s seeing—a collection that would be right at home in the Louvre, into the environment outside the walls—a border region in a middle-income country.
It wasn’t until 1956 that Savitsky arrived in Nukus, but he liked it so much that he gave his apartment in Moscow back to the government and proceeded to build his collection here in the state museum until it was bursting with the labors of Russian artists seeking to create new perspectives on the world through art. A grand surprise indeed. At publishing time, the third floor is currently undergoing renovations for a grand new permanent exhibition pairing Karakalpak and Uzbek applied art to paintings from the Russian Avant-Garde.
A cosmopolitan surprise
“I remember in Moynaq in the 1960s, 33 nations lived there,” Mr. Dospanov says. “All kinds of Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Turks, Kazakhs, Russians, Belarussians—lots of Georgians”.
Nukus is a cosmopolitan steppe town that is so instantly differentiable from any of the Silk Road cities tourists frequent on their way to Nukus. From the Uzbek’s love of their traditional patterned clothing of black and yellow, red and white, crisscrossed with diamonds and pomegranates, arrival in Nukus heralds a wave of black and white reminiscent of East Asian megacities.
More often pale of skin, with Korean, Mongol, and Kazakh features, the Karakalpaks of the capital carry themselves with a charming modernity, with the young women students and workers sporting smart suits or Japanese-style blouse-and-skirt combos. English is suddenly to be found all over, despite the Karakalpaks learning 3 languages in school while their Uzbek countrymen learn just 2.
“I speak a little Korean,” says Artem Sim, a 23-year-old Korean-Russian citizen of Karakalpakstan. “After the Second World War, the Russians moved a lot of Koreans here to Central Asia. So my grandparents stopped in Kyrgyzstan but eventually came down to Karakalpakstan. I lived in Tashkent and also Almaty (Kazakhstan) for like, 3 years, but Nukus is my house,” said the barista.
He is one member of the large ethnically Korean population whose influence can be felt in many ways, but perhaps most jarringly through the dinner menus. Anyone who goes to dine in Nukus, and expects to sit down for a classic Central Asian dinner of shashlik or plov has a delightful surprise waiting for them when they see Korean staples like kimchi on the menu.
The youth especially seem to be hurdling themselves towards a globalized world as fast as possible, making their surprise at seeing a Westerner all the more enjoyable for them—and for the Westerner who has the honor of a warm welcome in a faraway land.
“More young people are learning more languages so as to be part of a global society,” says 19-year-old Atabek, a local student who spoke to WaL with native-level grammar, but with the vocabulary of a person who was speaking his third or fourth known language. “I think we’re well-developing in education in Karakalpakstan and new opportunities are being offered to the young generation”.
Some people hate surprises, but those awaiting the traveler in Karakalpakstan are unlikely to bring out anything but a feeling somewhere between gemütlichkeit and honored privilege. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: A Karakalpak man smiles from under the shadow of a burden of woolen wraps for their yurts. PC: Andrew Corbley ©
