Satellite image (22.June 2003) of the Aral Sea region with the outlines of the Lake around 1850 (= ca.1960).

There is not much to see in Aral, where I stopped. I saw just a dusty former fishing town, from where the coast of the Aral Sea is now over 100km away. Nevertheless I spend a day in Aral at Sergey Sokolov's home, a hydrologist. I learned a lot about the ecological desaster that happend during the last decades in this region. The lake lost 88% of its volume and 70% of its surface since 1960! And it's going on... .
Read more here (German) or here and here (English).