The rivers
Although Uzbekistan is one of only two countries in the world to be doubly landlocked - i.e., you have to cross two borders before you have access to the open sea - and despite the region's extreme aridity, the country has long been abundantly supplied by rivers that rise in the high massifs and mark the limits of ancient Transoxiana.
The Syr Daria rises in the Ferghana valley, a few kilometers south of Namangan, where the Naryn and Kara Daria rivers meet. It flows for more than 3,500 km through Ferghana, before emptying into the Aral Sea on the northern Kazakhstan side.
TheAmou Daria, 2,500 km long, is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh and Piandj rivers on the Tajik-Afghan border (joined a little further on by the Kokcha). It merges into a wide delta in the Aral Sea. Its tumultuous course has earned it the nickname jayhun, or "indomitable river". Throughout history, its whims have led people to move their homes, and sometimes their towns, to stay close to its banks. Such is the case of Kounia-Ourgentch, in present-day Turkmenistan, which the Amou Daria abandoned to move closer to Noukous, in Uzbekistan.
It is now channelled into dams and detour to meet the ever-increasing irrigation needs of the cotton industry. Neither of these two rivers has reached the Aral Sea for a very long time.
A third river supplies the country with water: the Zeravchan or "Golden River". 741 km long, it rises in the Turkestan mountains of Tajikistan and flows between the Turkestan and Zeravchan massifs, skirting Samarkand before disappearing into a marshy delta in the Kyzyl Kum desert near Bukhara. For millennia, the flooding of the Zeravshan (more than 200 days of high water) enabled the development of artificial irrigation and the emergence of relatively rich and developed sedentary agricultural civilizations.
Cultivated land
The desire to expand cotton cultivation, and the consequent need for irrigation, led the Soviet authorities to launch a vast operation to domesticate the land and make the desert arable. Between Tashkent and Jizzakh begins what the Soviets dubbed the "Hunger Steppe". Once, a vast desert area stretched across much of Kazakhstan. A plan to conquer and exploit virgin land, launched by the Russians in the late 1950s, transformed it into a fertile area. The population has grown from 5,000 to over 1 million today. This steppe extends between the Nourata mountains and Lake Aydar Kul, north of the road linking Jizzakh to Nourata from the north.
Poorly managed irrigation
As a result of this massive irrigation policy, the Aral Sea disappeared, changing the entire regional landscape. Elsewhere, however, other sizeable lakes have appeared on maps where they had been absent until the 1980s-1990s. This is the case of Lake Aydar Kul, north of the Nourata mountains, extended to the east by Lake Tuzkan Kul, which formed in the early 1970s in the Kyzyl Kum desert, north of a line between Jizzakh and Navoi. Since then, its surface area has grown steadily. Its water is salty. Created following the opening, in 1969, of the Chardara reservoir in Kazakhstan, which retains the waters of the Syr Daria, the level continues to rise. Now over 150 km long, its m3 volume exceeds that of the former Aral Sea. The beauty of the landscape, with the Nourata mountains as a backdrop, is striking. Unfortunately, the water is polluted by pesticides and chemical fertilizers, so swimming is not recommended unless contraindicated.
The desert
Despite this irrigation policy, the desert has survived. The Kyzyl Kum (literally "red sand") covers almost 300,000 km2 between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It covers two-thirds of the country's surface area and extends into Turkmenistan, to the south, with the Kara Koum (or "black sand"), while to the north, in Kazakhstan, it merges into the infinity of the steppes. In the east, Tashkent and Samarkand, at the foot of the mountains, are the departure points for this area, which ends with the Aral Sea in the west. The Kyzyl Kum is not only sandy, it is also covered with extensive vegetation. There are forests such as Bala Tugaï, some 30 km from Urgentch, on the banks of the Amou Daria. Although there are many farms and kolkhozes, the density of housing is obviously very low. Apart from the road linking Bukhara to Urgentch, the only other road is the one linking Navoi to Zeravchan and Uchquduq, in the heart of the desert.
The green lung of the country: the Ferghana Valley
In the east of the country, shared by the three republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the Ferghana Valley is a vast plain 300 km long and 170 km wide, squeezed between the foothills of the Tian Shan range to the north, the Ferghana Mountains to the east and the Alai Pamir range to the south. This valley has always been the most fertile area in the region. Even today, Andijan boasts the highest cotton productivity. Also prodigious in fruit and vegetables of excellent flavor, orchards and vineyards alternate with cotton fields and the many industries established by the Soviets in Central Asia's most densely populated oasis.
