Private tour — price per person depends on group size:
| 1 traveler | $320 / person |
| 2 travelers | $245 / person |
| 3 travelers | $205 / person |
| 4 travelers | $185 / person |
Within living memory Moynaq was a busy fishing port on the Aral Sea. Then the rivers that fed the sea were drained for cotton, and the water retreated — more than a hundred kilometres — leaving the boats stranded on the sand. Today the ship graveyard at Moynaq is one of the most striking sights in Central Asia, and a monument to one of the worst man-made environmental disasters anywhere.
This two-day trip pairs that story with the extraordinary Savitsky Museum in Nukus — the world's second-largest collection of Russian avant-garde art — and the two-thousand-year-old Chilpik tower of silence, with a night in Nukus in between.
Khiva across Karakalpakstan to Nukus, with the Chilpik tower and the Savitsky Museum, overnight in Nukus.
North to Moynaq and the ship graveyard on the old seabed, with the small Aral Sea museum.
The drive back to Khiva across the steppe, arriving in the evening.
It can be extended to reach the current shore of the Aral Sea with an overnight in a desert yurt — just ask.
Pickup and the drive west across Karakalpakstan.
A Zoroastrian dakhma some two thousand years old, ringed on its hill above the Amu Darya, where the pre-Islamic dead were left exposed to the sky.
The Savitsky Museum, the world's second-largest collection of Russian and Soviet avant-garde art, saved from destruction and hidden here by Igor Savitsky, alongside Karakalpak folk art and archaeology.
Check in to your hotel in Nukus, with the evening free.
After breakfast, the drive north to Moynaq, about 200 km across the old delta.
Down onto the dry seabed where a dozen rusting fishing boats sit stranded, the Aral Sea now far beyond the horizon. The small Aral Sea museum in town tells the story of the port and the disaster.
A simple lunch before the long drive back.
The long return across Karakalpakstan to Khiva, arriving in the evening.
