Unique nature of Turkmenistan

• Height Badhyz
• The ridge Kopetdagh
• The Karakum desert
• The Kaplankyr Plateu
• The ridge of the Bolshoy Balkhan

Height Badhyz

Spacious Territory of the Badhyz wildlife sanctuary is situated in the south­east of Turkmenistan between Kushka and Tejen rivers. Its mountainous part is presented by the Paropamiz spur – a low ridge of Gyazghedyk. Northward hills spread that smoothly turn into a sandy plain bordering with the South- Eastern Karakum desert. Main sights of Badhyz are two pistachio groves - Kushkin and Pulkhatun, having total area of about 75 thousand hectares, and stagnant cavities of Evoulanduz 400 - 500 m deep.
The Badhyz landscape is extremely contrasting. In spring it is a blossoming land covered with carpets of poppies, tulips and a rich variety of grass where ferula badrakema is the most noticeable. It is a high perennial plant of the umbelliferous family that flowers once per its seven-eight-year life. In spring, in years of mass blossoming of ferula, Badhyz resembles a savannah, but already in May grasses are burned down and only bright-green crowns of pistachio enliven the landscape.
Word-for-word translation of Eroulanduz means «the collapsed saline soil». Its appearance is fantastic not only in spring but in summer as well. In March and April the cavity sparkles with smooth surface of the pinkish lake, in its bottom Glauber's salts - mirabilit, deposits. But hot weather comes and the lake turns into an «ice» skating-rink with the towering conical knolls of volcanoes extinct in the distant past. Some knolls are formed of basalt or tuff hardened after eruption.
In addition layers of the crystallized gypsum gleam here. In its strata botanists have discovered imprints of extinct aiphyllous plants. Large shells of sea molluscs have been also disclosing here, for it is the place of the lagoon of the sea that had disappeared long ago.
Such is the aspect of mysterious and many-sided Badhyz. As if it has been founded for travels. The organ­ized trips, of eouise. A single unskillful group is threat­ened to be lost in its expanses that are very rigorous to foolhardy dare-devils.
But in a company with an experi­enced erudite guide Badhyz lays bare in all its unique charm. It is unique as one fails to find a corner where the history of the Earth is represented in such a plenitude. Naturally, this unique zone is under the country protec­tion. The area of the Badhyz wildlife sanctuary is 87680 hectares.
It includes three game reserves: Chemenabit, Pulikhatun and Kyzyljar. The diversity of flora and fauna of the preserve land is innumerable. It is no accident that it has become the subject of hundreds of scientific mono­graphs. But the principal merit of Turkmen scientists being employed here is in the fact that they have saved kulans from absolute disappearance. Today the popula­tion of these splendid animals is great enough not to worry for their future.