The Land Beyond the River

Karakalpakstan is a place defined by its resilience, a society able to adapt to the challenges it faces. Geographically located in Uzbekistan, Central Asia, within the band of deserts north of Iran and Afghanistan – it is an environment of great natural beauty.

Reflecting on a troubling political year, a news item caught my interest, a protest regarding a constitutional change in Karakalpakstan. A territory which throughout the course of history has been governed by several empires, including the Soviet Union – the idea of identity, land and its relationship to people, led me to investigate this land beyond the river. Having left my home in Russia in 2010 to study in the USA, more recently relocating to London, this notion of land, the legacy of empire felt rather pertinent.

Under Soviet leadership (1925 – 1991) Karakalpakstan transformed into a cotton monoculture, which exhausted most of its water thus becoming the largest desert in Central Asia. The diversion of the Amu Darya River, the region’s main artery, resulted in the shrinking of the Aral Sea from 68,000 sq km to 3,500 sq km. As access to drinking water decreased, fishermen and livestock breeders lost their livelihood and currently, the impact of climate change has made conditions even worse.

Water represents part of the cultural identity in folk tales and crafts. Historically, formed of nomadic Turkic tribes, largely Muslim today, the Karakalpak people peacefully co-existed with the Orthodox Christians until the 1990s when the region was abandoned by the Soviet authorities.

Seeking to document all aspects of society, with invaluable help from my Russian-speaking driver, I spent time with several families. Binding these communities are extended families, three generations of families living together. Women play a central role in the family and in society, this is reflected in their freedom, greater independence and confidence.

The unity of human connection and strength define this region’s very existence and its future. The salt plateaus, rocky canyons, ever-expanding desert of the Aral Sea create an evocative visual metaphor for the life and endurance of the Karakalpak people.

© Kristina Varaksina - Karakalpak families usually have many children and three generations live under one roof.
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Karakalpak families usually have many children and three generations live under one roof.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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Uzbekistan and Karakalpakstan (bottom) flags are always raised together. The fall of the USSR brought independence, de jure but not de facto, to Karakalpakstan as in 1990 its parliament adopted a declaration of state sovereignty. However, in 1993 it was officially reincorporated to Uzbekistan. In return, the Uzbek authorities allowed for a referendum on independence to take place 20 years later. However, such a referendum did not take place. In July 2022, large protests broke out in the region over a proposed constitutional change which would strip Karakalpakstan of its autonomy. The proposed change was later scrapped in response to the demonstrations.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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Since the 1960s, when Soviet leadership started diverting rivers to irrigate fields, there has always been cotton production in the region. In September-October, many Karakalpak women work in the fields gathering cotton. For most of them, it's a second job, they come here in the late afternoon and work until sunset.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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Nulifar was born and has lived her entire life in Karakalpakstan. She loves her homeland's nature and culture, but as job opportunities for young people decline, she is thinking of going to study in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where her older sister already lives.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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Barsa Kelmes is translated from Turkic as "the land of no return". A wast area once the bed of a salt lake, the size of 1040 square kilometres, has no vegetation or wildlife. Standing silently between the deserts it is only visited by salt miners.

© Kristina Varaksina - Ulday-apa in Muynak, the former seaport town. Her house is one of the oldest traditional Karakalpak buildings in Muynak.
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Ulday-apa in Muynak, the former seaport town. Her house is one of the oldest traditional Karakalpak buildings in Muynak.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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House in Komsomol’sk-na-Ustyurte village. In the 1960s, the Aral Sea was very close and the village had over five hundred dwellers – young people from different parts of the Soviet Union moved there to help build a gas pipeline and an oasis in the desert. They planted many fruit trees and even built their own small airport. In the 1990s, with the climate and economic situation worsening many people chose to leave for Russia or Kazakhstan.

© Kristina Varaksina - A little girl in the sandy village of Komsomol’sk-na-Ustyurte.
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A little girl in the sandy village of Komsomol’sk-na-Ustyurte.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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Quat starts with the sunrise and works until he has the strength to go on. Selling it is his only source of income in the autumn.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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Quat is an artemia collector. Artemia is a primitive arthropod also known as brine shrimp, it is used as a rapidly growing food source for farm fish. The salinity level of the water in the Aral Sea does not allow any other life exist in or near it. A tiny creature you can’t see with the naked eye is all the sea is willing to give.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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School girls standing next to an installation at the former southern shore of the Aral Sea in Muynak, formerly a seaport town. Their parents were born when the sea was already gone, and only their grandparents remember the sea being so close.

© Kristina Varaksina - Shirin-apa’s granddaughters from different children.
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Shirin-apa’s granddaughters from different children.

© Kristina Varaksina - Shirin-apa, the head of the family of shepherds (cho`pon in Uzbek) in the Shakhaman area.
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Shirin-apa, the head of the family of shepherds (cho`pon in Uzbek) in the Shakhaman area.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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One of the last remaining families of shepherds (cho`pon in Uzbek) in the Shakhaman area. Thanks to the groundwater at shallower depths there is some vegetation in the area on which the animals can graze. The water has bounded the animals, the people and the land here.

© Kristina Varaksina - Zhalgas is a 72-year-old fisherman who still comes back to fish at Sudochye Lake however small the catch is.
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Zhalgas is a 72-year-old fisherman who still comes back to fish at Sudochye Lake however small the catch is.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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The village of Urga near Lake Sudochye is the first Russian settlement in the Aral Sea region. In the first half of the 20th century, fishing brigades began to arrive here and eventually a fish cannery was built in the area. At that time, several hundred people lived in the village, which saw a rich catch of fish every day, there was a post office and even a club. When the Aral began to recede, people started leaving Urga. The last resident left here in 1971 and the old fish cannery was forced to stop its activities completely in the early 2000s. The only remaining building hosts local fishermen who still come here hoping for a good catch.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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Sudochye Lake is an area of great beauty and it plays an important role in the migration of many breeding waterbird species including rare and disappearing species. Due to land irrigation, the inflow into the lake was significantly reduced and it completely lost its significance. In the 1960s, due to the decrease in the level of the Aral Sea and the blocking of the Raushan channel, which interrupted the flow of almost all river water, Sudochye began to dry up and turned into four separate small lakes. The water level is very inconsistent and is being further affected by climate change.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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The river bed of the Amu Darya, the region’s main water artery. The river and many of its major tributaries were diverted to the cotton fields, resulting in much of the river's drainage becoming arid. Finally, the water flowing in the Amu Darya comes almost entirely from glaciers in the Pamir Mountains and the Tian Shan, which are rapidly losing their mass due to climate change.

© Kristina Varaksina - Looking out of a shipwreck’s window. Only cattle now walk the deserted land.
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Looking out of a shipwreck’s window. Only cattle now walk the deserted land.

© Kristina Varaksina - Image from the The Land Beyond the River photography project
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A caravan of ships at the bottom of the former Aral Sea territory, now a desert, close to Muynak, the town that used to live off fishing. The remaining part of the water is dozens of kilometres away.

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