Kazakhstan’s Wild West

This is a unique trip to the almost surreal moonscapes of the Ustyurt Plateau and the Capes and islands of the Caspian Sea’s eastern shore.

This is a unique trip to the almost surreal moonscapes of the Ustyurt Plateau and the Capes and islands of the Caspian Sea’s eastern shore. This will be an adventure, a splendid journey through spectacular arid landscapes, in search of rare and unusual mammals in a remote region which is little known and doesn’t have so much in the way of creature comforts.

A combination of geology and erosive forces have produced a sublime landscape of buttes and mesas on the Ustyurt Plateau and the Karyndzharyk Hollow. It is reminiscent of Bryce Canyon but without the people – without any people! Steep cliffs border the plateau. On the east side these cliffs formed the limit of the much more extensive Aral Sea of Triassic times. These cliffs are home to a largely intact mammal fauna. Black-tailed Gazelle still thrive here and we’ll see herds of Transcaspian Urials (Ovis vignei arkal), a handsome wild sheep with spectacular curved horns. Honey Badgers, Golden Jackals and Wolves are all likely.

Though included in our Mammal Watching portfolio we should emphasise that this is a ‘mammal-finding’ trip. There can be long gaps between sightings. But the rewards will be something special. Several small cats have populations here as good as anywhere within their ranges. There are Caracals and the ‘steppe’ version of Wild Cat, a beautiful long-legged animal. There are Jungle Cats by the Caspian’s shore, and Sand Cats in the Artemesia steppes. Corsac Foxes criss-cross salty hollows whose floor is well below sea-level. Both Marbled Polecat and Steppe Polecat inhabit much of this terrain, numbers are good, but observation a matter of chance! Part of the reason for such a diversity and density of small to medium sized mammalian carnivores is the sheers abundance of rodents. At times the ground collapses under you so dense are the tunnel networks of Great Gerbils. There’s an impressive range of Jerboas ranging from smaller Small five-toed Jerboa and Thick-tailed Three-toed Jerboa, to the significantly large Great Jerboa and Severtzov’s Jerboa.

The extraordinary geomorphology continues with the landscape at Torysh covered in spheres often three or even four metres in diameter that have formed through a process of concretion. Not surprisingly Torysh is known in English as ‘The Valley of the Balls’. Caspian Plover breeds in the nearby steppe. We’ll spend the last few days on the Tyub-Karagan Peninsula east of Fort Shevchenko. Here the semi-deserts are home to Horsfield’s Tortoise and the curious Sunwatcher. Typical birds include Red-headed Bunting, Rose-coloured Starling, Brown-necked Raven, Asian Desert Warbler, Black-bellied Sandgrouse, Caspian Plovers, and in any wetland areas, large flocks of the lovely Red-necked Phalarope. Our camp will be by a small fishery which attracts foxes and the like at night and the inland escarpment is a great place for smaller cats with Caracal, Jungle Cat and ‘Steppe’ Wild Cat all making their homes in the broken terrain. In the daytime will provide us with the boat that we’ll use to visit the remote Tyuleniy Archipelago. Here we’ll encounter one of the World’s most endangered phocids, the Caspian Seal. They’ll have pupped three months previously (they pup on the sea ice) but by the time of our visit they’ll be migrating past the archipelago and we should see them hauled out on these hardly visited unpopulated islands. We’ll also visit some remarkable Miocene strata into which are etched the clear as if they were there yesterday footprints of the horse ancestor Hippotherium, the lion-like Machairodus copei and the spotted hyena-like Adcrocuta eximia.