A Sad Little Stan--July 14

The Republic of Karakalpakstan makes up the western end of Uzbekistan--my next destination. Angela, my extremely hung over guide and Yasmurat, the driver, get me through Turkmen customs and then it's adios! I walk through no man's land to the Uzbek side. Customs takes quite a bit of time because all the forms are in Russian! "You're just going to have to come help me with this!" I tell the guards. It gets done, and a short taxi ride takes me to Nukus, capital of the Karakalpakstan Republic. http://www.karakalpak.com/

The native Karakalpaks were once a nomadic people until forceably collectivised by the Soviets. They now suffer from terrible health problems from the surrounding environmental devastation, such as respiratory diseases, throat cancers, birth deformities galore, and TB. They have the highest mortality and infant mortality rates of the former USSR.

Nukus is also known as a former center for Soviet biological weapons research.

Soaring above it all is the fantastic Savitsky Karakalpakstan Art Museum, a repository of some 85,000 pieces of art--much of it 20th century art that the Soviets considered unacceptable to the party line and banned. Igor Savitsky, an artist and art collector, came to Nukus in the 1950s on an archaeological expedition and recognized the remoteness of Nukus as an ideal place to hide a generation of Russian avant garde art. He spent the next 15 years scouring basements and attics of the families of these banned artists (most of whom were banished to mental institutions for rehabilitation or the work camps), buying what he could, and brought it all here--far from Politburo eyes. Now, his "little" musuem is considered one of the top art collections in Asia. It is an extraordinary place.