Photos

Travels on the Silk Road: Repetek
Because of the current events in Turkmenistan I present some slides from this interesting country.
Here, enthusiastic Jora Rachmanoff, director of Repetek Reserve, is explaining the size of a Central asiatic cobra, found in Repetek. The creation of a Reserve in the middle of Kara Kum (=Black desert) and near the railway from Mery to Turkmenabat (=former Chärjev) goes back to early Soviet times. Up into the seventies, important publications in Russian on subjects like fauna, vegetation, climate, water household of Kara Kum reported findings from Repetek. A book in english summarizes much of that literature: H. Walter & S.-W. Breckle, 1998. Ecological Systems of the Geobiosphere. 3: Temperate and Polar Zonobiomes of Northern Eurasia. Springer, Berlin.