Desert Graveyard of Ships
In the 1960’s, the Soviets diverted tributary rivers from the Aral Sea, causing it to recede by more than 50% and leaving Uzbekistan’s only port torn of Mo’ynoq a desert wasteland filled with boats not quick enough to escape the aftermath. But one’s man economic disaster is just another man’s photo op, as it were, as the area is now host to tourists who’ve come to see these lingering ghosts of commerce.
(photos by Martijn Munneke via: kuriositas / io9)
The Aral Sea is so depressing.
Also horrifying: the island in the middle of it was home to a soviet bioweapons laboratory. They weaponized anthrax, smallpox, and bubonic plague there.
it’s supposedly been cleaned up since, but still. Spooky!
oooh I should keep this for reference
Correction to the above information:
The Aral Sea hasn’t shrunk to 50% of its original size.
It’s 10% of what it used to be and still declining due to poorly-planned and poorly-maintained systems built by the Soviets and still used by the various Central Asian nations despite the obvious climatic and health effects the shrinking Aral has had on them all.
“I don’t suppose I really know you very well - but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass that grows near old walls and that your hands are beautiful opening out of your sleeves and that the back of your head is a mossy sheltered cave when there is trouble in the wind and that my cheek just fits the depression in your shoulder.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald
My favorite celebrity couple ever.
(Source: penis-flytrap, via endlesslychanginghorizons)
(Source: wendus92, via endlesslychanginghorizons)
(Source: dailydoseofstuf, via didyoueatallthisacid)
- me after running for one minute: i'm still alive, but i'm barely breathing
