Uzbekistan’s annual Stihia festival takes place in the desert formerly known as the Aral Sea. Once a 26,000-square-mile body of water, the sea is now little more than a dried-out, semi-toxic seabed dotted with the skeletons of beached fishing boats. The rusted hulks are everywhere, like abandoned props from a dystopian post-apocalypse film.
We arrived just in time for the first sandstorm, which here means clouds of salt, sand, and chemicals, what’s left of the once polluted sea, sucked up into the air, then filling your eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The briny grit gets into places you never knew you had. Fortunately, festival organizers were selling goggles at the bar. Surgical masks were plentiful. (Thank you, coronavirus.)
