Through the desert - Part II

Early morning we set out in the car to drive into another desert - the Kyzylkum (red sand). After some hours we arrived at Nurata, a town founded as Nur by Alexander the Great 327 B.C. In the front of the picture you can still see the remains of his fortress, but except for some ruins, stones and sand there is nothing left. On the bottom of the fortress, there is a holy pond with holy fish and a mosque.

We had lunch in a local restaurant and then drove to the Aydarkul Lake in the desert. The lake is artificial and a byproduct of the dams built by the Soviets in the late 1960s. Before there was a salt pan and the water contains a lot of minerals but there are a lot of fish in it.

Then we reached the Aydarkul Yurt Safari Camp where we stayed the night. The camp consisted of more than 10 yurts (tents) arranged in a circle with a stone yurt as dinner hall and some toilets and showers on the hill.

A yurt is a portable, felt-covered, wood lattice-framed dwelling structure traditionally used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia, in our case Kazakhs. The Uzbeks have been settled long ago. The yurt has a door but no window, instead there are some small holes in the cover of the roof.

Inside they had laid out three mattresses for us (the first bed in Uzbekistan that was not too soft) and there hang a lot of Kazakh decorations from the top.

We ate a delicious dinner in the stone yurt and then sat a campfire and listened to Kazakh music. Then I was writing my travelogue like every evening.

The next morning, we boarded our camels and rode on them until we reached the lake again.

In the desert we saw a lot of animals but only if they were moving.

We swam several rounds in the lake and then had our picknick lunch.

Exhausted from all the activities we relaxed in the car while being driven through the desert to our next destination: Samarkand. On the way, we saw a lot of donkey carts and other vehicles.

The photographer