Yangykala Canyon
Interesting facts
- The canyon's banded walls are sediments laid down on the floor of an ancient sea, a remnant of the Tethys Ocean, later carved by wind and water.
- Garabogazköl, the lagoon whose waters once reached the canyon floor, is about ten times saltier than the open ocean, comparable to the Dead Sea.
- In 1980 Soviet engineers dammed the lagoon off from the Caspian; by 1984 it had dried out completely, and the barrier was removed in 1992.
- The name Garabogaz means 'black throat', after the strikingly dark water of the narrow strait linking it to the Caspian.
- Gozli Ata, whose shrine lies near the canyon, is believed to have been a Sufi teacher of the 14th century; his name means 'all-seeing father'.
- Inside the mausoleum, the saint rests in a triangular, prism-shaped coffin of extraordinary length.
- The Russian writer Konstantin Paustovsky made the nearby lagoon the subject of his 1932 book Kara-Bugaz, later filmed in 1935.
Why it is worth it
In the deserts of north-western Turkmenistan, the ground falls away into a maze of cliffs and ravines striped in red, pink, orange and white. Yangykala – usually translated from Turkmen as "fiery fortresses" – owes its name to the colour of its rock, and local people also call the area Gyzyl Dag, the Red Mountains. The walls of the canyon rise between 60 and 100 metres, and the eroded ridges and buttresses along its edges do look like the ruined ramparts of some vast fortress.
The canyon lies in the Balkan Region, roughly 160 km east of the Caspian port of Türkmenbaşy and some 165 km north of Balkanabat, in arid country with no settlement of any size nearby. Its banded cliffs are layers of sedimentary rock, much of it limestone, worn into bizarre shapes by water, and the floor of the canyon is thought to have once been flooded by the waters of the Garabogazköl, the great lagoon of the Caspian that lies to the north-west. Sometimes described as the Grand Canyon of Central Asia, Yangykala is part of a wider landscape of escarpments and gorges, including the less-known Yangysuw canyon nearby.
The remoteness of the canyon is part of its character: visitors hike into the ravines or camp along the rim, and jeep tours are the common way to reach it. South-west of the canyon lies Gozli Ata, one of Turkmenistan's most important pilgrimage sites: the mausoleum of a Sufi saint, a brick building with twin white domes, surrounded by the ruins of a madrasa, the tomb of the saint's wife Bibi Aysulu and many tribal grave markers.
Getting there
The canyon is reached by road and desert track, a drive of around four hours from Balkanabat. The nearest town is Jebel, about 125 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Balkanabat International Airport (BKN), about 120 km away; Türkmenbaşy, on the Caspian coast, lies about 160 km to the west.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Yangykala Canyon is an eponymous landform in the Balkan Region of north-west Turkmenistan, about 160 km east of Turkmenbashi and 165 km north of Balkanabat. The bottom of the canyon was once flooded by the Garabogazköl.
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