Geography, nature, and climate of Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan stretches about 1,425 kilometres from the Aral Sea in the north-west to the Fergana Valley in the east, and about 930 kilometres from the Kazakh steppe in the north to the Afghan and Turkmen borders in the south. It is one of only two doubly-landlocked countries on Earth — every one of its neighbours is also landlocked (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan). The other is Liechtenstein.

The country divides broadly into four physical zones: the Kyzylkum desert in the centre and west (the 'Red Sands', shared with Kazakhstan); the Kyzylkum's edge oases along the Amu Darya, Zeravshan, and Syr Darya rivers, which host almost all Uzbek settlement; the Fergana Valley in the east, a fertile bowl surrounded by mountains and containing about 60 per cent of the country's population; and the Western Tien-Shan and Nurata mountains in the north-east, rising to nearly 4,700 metres.

Two rivers gave Central Asia its civilisations. The Amu Darya (Oxus of antiquity) rises in the Pamir mountains and flows west, marking the modern Uzbek-Afghan and Uzbek-Turkmen borders before turning north through the Kyzylkum toward the Aral Sea. The Syr Darya (Jaxartes) rises in the Tien-Shan and flows north-west across the Fergana Valley and southern Kazakhstan. The Zeravshan is a shorter but critically important tributary that watered the Sogdian oases of Samarkand and Bukhara; it once reached the Amu Darya but now dies in the desert before it does.

Both great rivers historically emptied into the Aral Sea. Both have had most of their water diverted for cotton irrigation since the 1960s — the direct cause of the Aral's collapse.

The Kyzylkum ('Red Sands') covers most of central and western Uzbekistan and extends into southern Kazakhstan. It is one of the world's larger deserts by area — around 300,000 km² — but is a mixed-substrate desert, with dunes in some areas and gravelly plains, salt pans, and rocky uplands in others. Small ranges of ancient rock (the Nurata mountains, the Bukantau) rise out of it. It hosts modest but real biodiversity: gazelles, foxes, wildcats, hedgehogs, tortoises, monitor lizards, and around 250 bird species including saker falcons and steppe eagles.

Lake Aydarkul, in the north-eastern edge of the Kyzylkum, was accidentally created in 1969 when a Syr Darya reservoir spilled over into a Kyzylkum depression during high-water years. It is now a permanent lake of around 3,000 km², rimmed by Kazakh yurt camps and reachable by road from Samarkand.

In 1960 the Aral Sea was the world's fourth-largest inland body of water: about 68,000 km² and 1,100 km³ of water. By 2015 it had shrunk to less than a tenth of that volume, and had split into three disconnected residual lakes. The direct cause was the diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to irrigate cotton fields — a Soviet decision made in full awareness of the ecological consequences.

The result is one of the most severe man-made ecological disasters of the 20th century. The exposed seabed — Aralkum — became a desert of alkaline dust, laced with agricultural chemicals, that continues to affect regional health. The fishing town of Muynak, once a busy Soviet port, now sits 150 kilometres from the current shoreline, and its ship graveyard is one of the most photographed environmental images anywhere. Small-scale restoration is underway in the northern (Kazakh) Aral; the southern Aral in Uzbekistan is unlikely to be reversed.

The eastern edge of Uzbekistan rises into the Western Tien-Shan range — the same range that forms Kyrgyzstan's mountain spine. Peaks reach 4,643 metres at Khazret Sultan (in the Hissar range on the Tajik border) and the Chatkal massif north-east of Tashkent tops out around 4,300 metres.

The Western Tien-Shan was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016 as a natural site, in a joint listing with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It preserves rare walnut-fruit forests — remnant Tertiary forests that survive nowhere else at this scale — and habitat for snow leopards, Tien-Shan brown bears, ibex, and marmots.

Charvak reservoir, an hour and a half from Tashkent, is the country's weekend playground: swimming and paragliding in summer, downhill skiing at nearby Beldersay and Amirsoy in winter.

The Fergana Valley is a densely populated intermontane basin about 300 km long and 70 km wide, split between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Its floor is one of Central Asia's most fertile agricultural zones; its edges rise into the Alay and Chatkal mountains. Roughly 60 per cent of Uzbekistan's population lives in this valley.

It is also the country's craft heartland — Margilan silk, Rishton ceramics, Chust knives — and produced some of the finest scholars of the Islamic Golden Age.

Uzbekistan's wildlife is under pressure but not gone. Notable species include the snow leopard (Western Tien-Shan), Bukhara deer (tugai riverine forests along the Amu Darya), Marco Polo sheep and ibex in the mountains, saiga antelope (rare, in the north-west), goitered gazelle in the Kyzylkum, and the Turkestan tortoise. Turkey vultures, saker falcons, and steppe eagles are all seasonally present. The tugai forests along the Amu Darya are one of the world's most threatened woodland ecosystems and are now protected in reserves.

Uzbekistan has an extreme continental climate. Winters average -5 to -8°C in the north and 0 to +2°C in the south, with occasional deep colds down to -20°C. Summers are hot: 30 to 35°C is typical across the country, with 40°C common in Bukhara and Khiva. Rainfall is low almost everywhere — about 100 mm/year in the desert, 300 mm in the mountains, 200 mm in cities. Skies are usually clear. The best travel windows are April to early June, and September to late October.