Disaster Tourism

출처 : NYT

Salt kicked up in a recent windstorm stuck to people’s skin. 

“You could barely wash it off with water,” said Vladimir Zuev, a tour operator in Muynak.

Credit : Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

For three days, the tempest hurled silt off the former seabed of
what was once the planet’s fourth-largest inland body of water.
It blotted out the sky and left the residents of the former port, Muynak, in western Uzbekistan, chewing salty grit.
Even the rain turned brackish, sending panicked farmers scrambling to rescue crops.

Tourists on stranded, rusted ships in Muynak.

Credit : Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Paradoxically, the man-made disaster strangling the town
has become its main attraction in recent years. Tourism is booming.

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“A lot of people want to see an ecological crisis,”
said Vadim Sokolov, the head of the Uzbek branch of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea.

Tourists enjoying the hot water from a spring that emerged on the former Aral seabed near the village of Akespe, Kazakhstan.

Credit : Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The market in Muynak

Credit : Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Making mud bricks to build a house in Muynak.

Credit : Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

출처 : The New York Times - 2018.08.11-12