Requiem for a paradise

"Forty years ago, Muynak was a busy fishing port where the waters of the Aral Sea lapped up against the shoreline.

Today the waters have receded so much, that there is not a drop as far as the eye can see.


When the former Soviet Union diverted the Ama Dariya and the Syrdariya - the rivers which fed the Aral Sea - to grow cotton in the desert, they created an ecological and human disaster.


You need to take to the air to appreciate the scale of the damage that has been done.

What was the fourth biggest inland sea is now mostly desert.

What appears to be snow on the seabed is really salt. The winds blow this as far as the Himalayas."

From Paul Welsh's contribution for BBC from Uzbekistan

Following pictures have been taken in Moynaq, once a flourishing fishermen center, now a ghost town lost in a salt desert. I drove many hours all the way from Nukus to see this dramatic scenario, and I don't regret this choice.

Because of their peculiar subject, these pictures don't need any comments or caption. Are therefore presented in their nude and cruel aspect.