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
Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan border Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan border The Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan border is 1,314km (816m) and runs from the tripoint with Kazakhstan to the tripoint with Tajikistan. It is Kyrgyzstan’s longest external boundary. The border starts in the north at the tripoint with Kazakhstan and then creates a ‘finger’ of Uzbek territory wedged between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; the border traverses the Pskem Mountains, with much of this area being taken up by a series of national parks (Ugam-Chatkal National Park in Uzbekistan and Besh-Aral State Nature Reserve in Kyrgyzstan). The boundary then proceeds in a roughly south-eastwards direction, traversing the Chatkal Range and the Qurama Mountains before