In the heart of Aktau

An amazing landscape was opened to our eyes - Aktau mountains that means "White mountains" in the Kazakh language. But they seem to be white only from a distance. Actually these fantastical formations are of great variety of colours and hues - bright and warm red, desaturated orange, varied yellow, greenish, grey and brown, and white ridges and peaks reach for clouds. Quaint forms with astonishing texture, making as if velvet folds, these soft by touch mountains are very perfidious. In dry weather the slopes are easily ruined, in wet weather they become waterlogged and legs get stuck firmly. Especially troublesome are places that look like crocks and called "takyr", they are the places where mudflows went down.
Sand, pebbles, clay, intersperses of white quartz, saxauls, relict argan trees, scrubby bushes, some desert plants - that's all there is here. And not a single sign of water. Nevertheless, this lifeless landscape bewitches. Incredibly beautiful, wild, absolutely unearthly, it attracts like a magnet. Welcome to Mars!
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