Barsakelmes: the former Aral Sea island that became a desert nature reserve

Ostrov Barsakelmes, Kazakh for roughly “if you go, you won’t come back”, was once the largest island in the Aral Sea and is now a stretch of land on the dried sea floor in the Aral District of Kyzylorda Region. It contains the Barsakelmes Nature Reserve. It suits travellers interested in the Aral Sea disaster, desert landscapes and Soviet-era folklore. We could not confirm how visitors reach it or what permission they need.

Where Barsakelmes is and what kind of trip it means

Barsakelmes lies in the Aral District of Kyzylorda Region, about 180 km southwest of the town of Aralsk according to Russian Wikipedia. The city of Kyzylorda is about 445 km away in a straight line, and Aktobe about 556 km. The remaining part of the Aral Sea is about 94 km away in a straight line.

This is a remote desert destination, not a stop on a standard route. We could not confirm any public transport, road condition, ranger post or visitor programme. Someone with no car and no Russian should treat it as an expedition-style trip that should be arranged in advance, ideally by contacting the reserve. Without confirmed access the trip may be wasted.

From island to peninsula to dry ground

The sea around it has changed, and with it the size of the land. In the 1960s the island measured about 23 by 7 km (Russian Wikipedia), while Kazakh Wikipedia gives 28 by 8 km and an area of 133 km² for 1987. As the Aral shrank, Barsakelmes grew. Russian Wikipedia says it became a peninsula in 1997 and measured about 40 by 16 km in the early 2000s.

Sources disagree on what came next. Russian Wikipedia says it stopped being a peninsula in summer 2009 when the eastern part of the Large Aral dried out, reappeared as one in 2010, disappeared again in 2014 and has been a peninsula since 2015, with the shoreline peaking in the wet years of 2017 and 2020. Kazakh Wikipedia says it lost peninsula status from 2009 and is now a hill on the former sea bed. Expect the shoreline to vary year to year.

What the landscape and wildlife look like

The south is a raised plateau. The north is a gently rolling plain cut by dry stream valleys. Soils are grey-brown, with patches of sand, takyr clay flats and saltpans, and the old sea floor around it is salt marsh. Kazakh Wikipedia notes rocky cliffs on the west coast and a flat eastern shore, with saxaul, wormwood and other salt-tolerant shrubs.

On animals, Kazakh Wikipedia says that as the sea dried and the soil turned saline, saiga, kulan (Asian wild ass), goitered gazelle and hares were moved to the Kapshagai hunting reserve and to the Ustyurt Reserve. We could not confirm which large mammals live in the reserve today. A jumping spider, Sitticus barsakelmes, was named after the island in 1998.

The salt deposits matter in practice: English Wikipedia advises visitors to close their eyes during dust storms and strong winds.

The legend of the place of no return

The name comes with a story of people who went to the island and returned years later, believing only two or three days had passed. In the late Soviet era the tale grew into reports of a prehistoric flying lizard, UFO landings and broken time, peaking in the early 1990s with an article in the magazine Tekhnika Molodyozhi.

It was a hoax. Science fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko, then in Almaty, and Grigory Neverov of a Moscow fantasy fans’ club later admitted fabricating letters from fishermen. Tracing it back, they found that the original newspaper story was itself a journalist’s joke; Lukyanenko said it dates to a 1950s piece in the paper Leninskaya Smena. Kazakh Wikipedia also records a gentler legend of a clan led by Latpay who crossed the ice to the island and prospered.

The real history is plainer. Geographer A. Maksheyev and topographer A. Akishev surveyed the island in August 1848, and Taras Shevchenko made the first sketches of its plants and animals. Boris Lavrenyov set his 1924 novella The Forty-First here.

When to go to Barsakelmes

The climate is sharply continental and very dry, and the short spring and autumn windows are the realistic choice. The figures below are ERA5 reanalysis normals for 2011–2020 at a grid point at 101 m, close to the reserve’s own height, not a weather station.

May and September are the most comfortable: daytime highs around 22–23 °C and nights near 15 °C. April and October are cooler at about 13 °C by day. July averages 31.5 °C by day and stays above 24 °C at night, and Russian Wikipedia records an absolute maximum of +44 °C. From December to February days stay below freezing, with a recorded minimum of −36 °C. June to August bring under 5 mm of rain a month, so there is almost no relief from heat or dust.

The annual total is small either way: about 130 mm in the reanalysis, 128 mm per Russian Wikipedia, 100–120 mm per Kazakh Wikipedia.

Combining it with other places

Barsakelmes is probably best seen as part of a wider Aral Sea trip. The Aral Sea page covers the shrinking sea itself. The Baikonur cosmodrome is about 266 km away in a straight line, in the same region. Other sites on this guide are 600 km or more away.

For a summer swim in Aral District, people usually go to Lake Kambash, though its level changes from year to year.