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Our 6:30 arrival into the town of Aral was the start of a very busy day. A quick trip to the hotel and checkin followed by breakfast at 8:00 got things off to a quick start. We got a little break after that as the days activities started at 10:00 with a walking tour of the town. Just down the street from the hotel we visited a park with memorabilia and memorials to the towns fishing days, then a WWII memorial park with an astoundingly long list of the names of those from this region that died in the war.

With all that as a warm up we then got onto the real activity of the day a 200km round trip trip to the waters of the Aral sea. This was no easy drive almost the entire route was over tracks that were simply wheel marks in the now dry bed of the once might Aral sea. Along the way we saw lots of camels (both the 1 and 2 hump variety), many eagles, horses, goats and sheep.

We stopped at one village to get a closer look at the camels.

Later stopped for a sumptuous lunch in a private home in a village named Tastubek.

As it turned out this village was only 15 minutes from the sea shore and by about 17:00 we were able to put our hands in the waters of this ill-fated sea.

A flat tyre on the return journey extended the day a bit but we were back at the hotel by 20:00 well and truely ready for bed.