Curated Itinerary
Cold Winter Deserts of Turan
One cold-winter desert, three countries: Barsa-Kelmes on the dried Aral bed, Repetek’s saxaul forests and the Kyzylkum between the Silk Road rivers.
This itinerary crosses the Cold Winter Deserts of Turan, the three-country property UNESCO inscribed in 2023 for a biome that freezes in January and bakes in July. Three stops, one per state: Barsa-Kelmes, the former Aral island now stranded in the desert that replaced its sea; Repetek, Turkmenistan’s century-old sand laboratory in the black-saxaul Karakum; and the red Kyzylkum, the desert the Silk Road caravans actually crossed.
The transect logic is the listing’s own: the same double-extreme climate solved three ways, by a relict island fauna, a research forest, and a caravan desert still worked by herders. Saxaul, saiga and kulan are the recurring cast.
Realistically, start with the Kyzylkum — yurt camps slot into any Uzbek circuit — and treat Barsa-Kelmes and Repetek as expedition extensions. April–May or September–October only; the seasons in between are the reason the listing exists.
Read the full story of this route in the CHO Magazine →
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Guides, associations and cultural operators build their own routes here: pick the stops from the archive, add your notes, and the map, the GPX and the printable version come out on their own. Your programme gets a permanent page, your events go on the city pages people read while planning — and if you sell a place on your walk, you keep at least 99% of it.
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A word from your host
Do the Kyzylkum yurt night even if you skip everything else — the desert cold arriving at sunset, minutes after a hot day, is the whole biome explained on your own skin. The other two stops are for the expedition-minded, and worth it.
Getting around
Kyzylkum camps book easily between Samarkand and Khiva; Barsa-Kelmes needs permits and 4x4 logistics from Aralsk; Repetek depends on Turkmen visas. Travel windows: April–May and September–October, strictly.
Step by step
Download for tour navigation
PDF is the stop list with GPS, to print or keep on the phone. GPX for Garmin / Komoot / OsmAnd. KML for Google Earth and Maps.