Postcard from Kairakum

 

Greetings from the Tajik Sea!

Tajikistan is a landlocked country, but people often call this large reservoir a sea. Sarah and I went with a group of other Khujandi expats (including two who own cars) to Kairakum on a lazy Sunday afternoon. We sat on a concrete tapchan/gazebo (I think there were dried corn stalks as the thatching) and ate and talked. A few of us wandered down to the sea and went swimming. The water was fairly warm; apparently the water is several meters lower now than it is in the spring, after the rains.

So we'll have to go back in the spring to see the water at its true height!

Kyle

I had to add this photo of my foot hanging off the tapchan to show how much watermelon we are and how the seeds were.

P.S. Kairakum was created with a dam on the Syr Darya River to irrigate more fields of cotton. I had to find out when it was built, because no one with us knew: 1956-58. It is 55km long and 20km wide at its widest point, covering an area of 513 km squared, an average depth of 8.1m, with its deepest point at 25m.