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.