Despite being roughly the size of Haiti or Rwanda (around 29,000km²), the Saryesik Atyrau Desert is rarely visited. Its southern edge lies less than 50km from Taldykorgan, an industrial city of over 100,000 people, and it stretches more than 200km north to the southern shores of Lake Balkhash. This collection of Saryesik Atyrau photos was taken during English ultra-runner Jamie Maddison’s 2017 east–west 70-mile run across the desert. Maddison has completed two other long-distance runs in Central Asia: a 100km+ camel-supported run around Uzbekistan’s Kyzyl Kum Desert in 2013, and a seven-day, 190-mile run across Kazakhstan’s Betpak Dala on the western edge of Lake Balkhash in 2014.
Although just a few hours from Almaty, the desert remains largely overlooked by travellers. Sandy tracks are the only roads, the central section has no settlements, and the northern shore near Balkhash is even more remote. The photographs from this journey are likely among the very few images of the region available online.
In 2020, the Kazakh government completed a plan to restore the Balkhash tiger in the Ili-Balkhash State Nature Reserve. Until the late 19th century, this tiger ranged from the Black Sea to western China, including northern Afghanistan and Iran. The last sighting in Kazakhstan was in 1948. Its decline was driven by targeted extermination during the Soviet era, habitat destruction from irrigation projects, and the hunting of ungulates, which reduced its prey base.
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