Aral Sea Aral Sea The Aral Sea () was an endorheic lake (one with no outflow) lying between Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda Regions) in the north and Uzbekistan (Karakalpakstan autonomous region) in the south. The name roughly translates as "Sea of Islands", referring to over 1,100 islands that had dotted its waters; in the Turkic languages "aral" means "island, archipelago". The Aral Sea drainage basin encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Iran. Formerly the fourth-largest lake in the world with an area of , the Aral Sea has been shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that
Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border the border in 2000-2001 with an initial delimitation treaty being signed on 5 July 2001. The border was fully demarcated on the ground during the period 2003-2005. In 2013 a new cross-border railway was opened by Presidents Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border The Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border is 413km (257m) in length and runs from the Caspian Sea to the tripoint with Uzbekistan. It is the shortest international boundary of both states. The land border starts at the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea at Cape Sue, just to the north of the Turkmen town of