Nukus / Karakalpakstan

The Nukus art museum named after Igor Savitsky

The Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan occupies 117,000 square km and is situated in the north-western part of Uzbekistan. The Amu-Darya River flows through the territory of Karakalpakstan. This region borders on Turkmenistan (in the south), on Khorezm province (Uzbekistan) and on Kazakhstan (in the north).
The population ranks between 1.8 – 2 million people. The official language of the Republic of Karakalpakstan is Turkic, close to Kazakh and less so to Uzbek.
Cotton, rice and melons are the main products.
Life is not easy here, because today the age-old oasis of rivers, lakes, reed beds, forests and farmland that constitute the Amu-Darya delta has greatly dried up.
The capital of Karakalpakstan is Nukus, 1255 km from Tashkent, 166 km from Urgench. It has the population of only 200,000 people.

Nukus had developed from a small settlement since 1932. It is in the Aral Sea region, which has been registered as the dustiest place on the planet because of ecological disaster.
Nukus is not a top of tourist destination. Former forbidden city for the development of chemical weapons, it had been closed to foreigners entirely until the late 80s.

Nukus City Tour NC1 – half-day

The Nukus Art Museum is named after Igor Savitsky. Created by an eccentric, fanatical collector Igor Savitsky, this highly unusual museum managed to preserve a world-class collection of the works of artists which otherwise would have been lost forever. The collector secured a huge set of samples of Soviet art of the 1920s and 30s, saving it from communist destruction.
It is the second best gallery of Russian avant-garde in the world after the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg.
There are 90,000 pieces in Savitsky’s collection. It contains items executed in accordance with state approved socialist realism alongside with dissident; decadent art repressed and rejected by the communist regime. The State Museum offers an interesting exhibition of the fauna and flora of the region. There are also displays of the Aral Sea and local health problems, of archaeology and ancient history. Samples of traditional jewellery, costumes, musical instruments and yurt decorations are excellent.

Around Nukus Tour NC2 – full-day

Muynak (the Aral Sea) – is 210 km north of Nukus, once the largest fishing port on the Aral but now it stands 100 km from the water. About fifty years ago, this port was so busy place, where the waters of the Aral 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. 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. Aral’s tragedy has been described as one of the planet’s “most shocking environmental disasters”.
The port of Muynak poses as a silent witness to its death throes, the victim of a soviet crusade to overcome nature.