Current Time in Nukus, Uzbekistan

Nukus is the capital of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region that occupies the entire north-western third of Uzbekistan. The city stands on the Amu Darya river at the edge of the Kyzylkum desert, hundreds of kilometres from Samarkand or Tashkent, in a landscape of flat steppe, salt flats and irrigated cotton fields. Summers are fiercely hot and winters bitterly cold, and the vast emptiness surrounding the city is part of what makes arriving here feel like reaching the end of a road.

About three hundred and thirty thousand people live in Nukus, most of them Karakalpaks, a Turkic people with their own language and traditions, alongside Uzbeks, Kazakhs and smaller communities. The city is the political, cultural and educational centre of a region facing extraordinary environmental difficulties, since the drying of the Aral Sea has devastated the fishing industry, altered the climate and left a legacy of dust storms and health problems. Cotton, rice and livestock farming remain the mainstays of the local economy, together with administration and, increasingly, tourism.

Modern Nukus was built almost from nothing in the 1930s, when Soviet planners chose a small settlement on the Amu Darya as the capital of the newly formed Karakalpak republic. Wide boulevards, apartment blocks and public buildings were laid out on a grid, and for much of the Soviet period the city was closed to foreigners because of nearby military research facilities, including chemical weapons testing on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. That isolation had one remarkable and unintended consequence.

The Igor Savitsky Museum, officially the Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art, is the reason many travellers come to Nukus at all. Savitsky, an artist and collector, used the city's remoteness to gather thousands of works by Soviet avant-garde and nonconformist painters whose art was banned or ignored in Moscow. The result is one of the world's largest collections of Russian avant-garde painting, displayed alongside Karakalpak folk art and archaeological finds, and often described as a desert Louvre. Other sights include the State Museum of Regional Studies, the Berdakh monument and, a short drive away, the ancient necropolis of Mizdakhan with its ruined mausoleums and the crumbling walls of Gyaur Kala.

Nukus is also the base for journeys to Moynaq, the former fishing port now stranded fifty kilometres from any water, where rusting ships lie on the sand as a memorial to the Aral Sea. Beyond it lies the Ustyurt plateau and the ruined desert fortresses of ancient Khorezm.

Cultural life centres on Karakalpak music, especially the epic songs of the bakhshi tradition, the state theatre, and a cuisine that favours fish dishes, noodles and hearty stews. Transport is provided by an airport with flights to Tashkent and Moscow, long-distance trains, and roads leading to Khiva and Urgench about three hours away. Karakalpak State University and a medical institute serve the region's students.

Nukus is a city of contrasts, combining a sobering environmental story with a world-class art collection, and it has become an essential stop for travellers seeking the less familiar side of Central Asia.