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Pools of the Karakal .. [2 / 2]
North of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, the Karakal desert turns into a spotted landscape with what appear to be hundreds of frozen ponds or, who knows, salt pits left over from the Paratethys Ocean.
I have not been able to figure out what these are really. It hasn't helped that the area is invariably clouded over every time I fly over. Even in this case, but Luminar dehazed it and brought out much of the detail.
Pools of the Karakal .. [1 / 2]
North of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, the Karakal desert turns into a spotted landscape with what appear to be hundreds of frozen ponds or, who knows, salt pits left over from the Paratethys Ocean.
I have not been able to figure out what these are really. It hasn't helped that the area is invariably clouded over every time I fly over. Even in this case, but Luminar dehazed it and brought out much of the detail.
In the year 2000, Turkmenistan set out to build a great inland lake in the Karashor depression. The first waters started flowing in 2008, and this photo from 2013 shows the water levels rising. Is it worth the cost of destruction of the Aral Sea and Amu Darya? Will it even survive for long without turning into a nightmare of salinization? Or for that matter, will it even survive climate change? I guess we will find out by mid-century.
This is why I always choose the window seat and why I always carry a camera onto the plane. I learned something while trying to geolocate these magnificent cliffs by the shore, which for a decade I had thought was a shoreline on the Caspian. This is why it is not enough to just "look at google maps".
