Journalist Y. Metelev says:
The Turgai Trough is an amazing land. In all the immense Kazakhstan there is no other such thing to be found. Blown by all the winds, it stretches south of the Trans-Urals and the Kazakh Upland for many hundreds of kilometers to the shifting semi-deserts of the Aral Sea.
Slightly hilly valleys, overgrown with wheat, go beyond the horizon, healing air infused on steppe grasses, thousands of herds of saiga antelopes running along the steppe flush with the wind, the fabulous wealth of the bowels and above all this - a blue sky with evening and morning dawns of rare purity thanks to exceptional transparency of the atmosphere.
During the daytime in the summer, the thermometer can show more than 40 degrees Celsius in the shade, and at night it is good to sleep in a fur sleeping bag. For weeks the merciless Asian sun can blaze down, and suddenly, from out of nowhere clouds, a downpour will pour out of such force that beyond the wall of water you will not see the hood of your car. And there is one more feature of Turgai. Here, like no other place, one can observe not only daytime, but also nighttime mirages.
I remember well how, when I first got to Turgai, I saw a mirage. Our expedition vehicle had been walking for several hours through a deserted area, heading for the Irgiz River region. The sun was beating down mercilessly, and everyone in the back of the truck dreamed of only one thing - to get to the river as soon as possible and plunge into the cool water.
And the river suddenly appeared as soon as we climbed the hill. Under the rays of the sun, the water sparkled and played with glare, and shady willows grew on both banks. With joy I shouted: "Hurray, we have arrived!" But my fellow travelers, who have worked in this area for more than one field season, looked at me as if I was a Madman.
- It's a mirage! - said one of the geologists. - Take a closer look. You see how everything is blurry and trembling in the air.
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Indeed, it turned out to be so, and soon the marvelous picture disappeared, as if it had melted into thin air. Then I got used to such mirages and stopped paying attention to the rivers, lakes, trees that appeared on both sides of the road when crossing. Once, while in the Aral Sea region, we even had a chance to see the city of Aktyubinsk, which was at least 300 kilometers away. Multi-storey apartment buildings, shady green streets, and even city traffic seemed to be only 2-3 kilometers away.
Mirages, about which I spoke, have long been well studied and are explained by purely physical laws of refraction and reflection of light from very distant objects. An American meteorologist at the beginning of the 20th century observed what was apparently the most distant object of a mirage. While on the east coast of the United States, he saw an African city, and the scientist Flammarion, in his book Atmosphere, describes in detail the mirage of the battle of Waterloo in July 1815.
In the morning sky, not only the army was clearly visible, but also the suits of the soldiers, an artillery gun with a broken wheel. An indispensable condition for the manifestation of such mirages should be a high transparency of the atmosphere and uneven heating of its upper and lower layers, which is very characteristic of Turgai with its sharply continental climate. But you can see in the Kazakh Turgai and very unusual mirages - night.
Imagine: in the evening twilight somewhere near the horizon, and sometimes at a distance of 1-2 kilometers from you, a bright light suddenly appears. It flares up more strongly, then it dims or burns evenly and evenly and then suddenly disappears. Judging by the map you have, there is no dwelling in the place where the glow appears, and everyone can see the light.
Our experienced expedition chauffeur from local Kazakhs Timur explains everything simply: "It is the soul of the deceased who wanders around his home." Under the house, he understands an adobe burial house in which, according to Muslim tradition, the body of the deceased is left. There are many such burial grounds in Kazakhstan.
Relatively recently, mysterious ancient geoglyphs (ground mound images) were found in the Turgai valley:
Once we decided to check what Timur said, and when a mysterious light suddenly appeared in the area of the village of Amangeldy, we drove in a car in that direction. Indeed, after about 3 kilometers we reached a luxurious burial ground, but by this time the mysterious light had moved on. “The soul went far, far away in the desert and did not want to meet a Russian,” the driver explained.
The mysterious night lights of Turgai were handled by more than one specially organized expedition. Scientists managed to establish that most often the lights can be seen in the area of the settlements of Semiozernoye, Diyevka, but especially in the area of the relict Amankaragai and Tersek forest areas. These relatively small forests are a kind of attraction of desert steppe places. They consist mainly of ancient pine trees and deciduous undergrowth.
Locals claim to sometimes see several lights just above the tops of the trees. At the same time, a fire of a pleasant-looking color is able to move. No one can explain the reasons for the gravitation of night lights to the forest, but one cannot discount (the author's personal opinion) the possibility of landing in these places of unidentified flying objects, which are convenient to camouflage themselves in the local forests so as not to attract the attention of strangers.
I will add that from these areas it is possible to monitor space rockets from the Baikonur cosmodrome, located relatively close to this part of Turgai, without interference.
Strange night lights in Turgay have caused accidents on more than one occasion. The fact is that the steppe roads in Turgai are not what they usually think when it comes to the road between Gatchina and Krasnoye Selo. The roads of Turgai are capable of confusing and driving crazy (in the literal sense of the word) even an experienced geologist who knows the area well and, in addition, owns a map and a compass.
Once I had the opportunity to drive a lorry that had been overhauled on the basis of the Central Asian expedition in the village of Chelkar (Priaralye) to the north of the Turgai trough to the village of Semiozernoye.
One of the expedition's field detachments needed the car. In addition to the driver and me, there was also the most experienced Petersburg geologist Vadim Seleznev in the car, who knew the tangled roads of Turgai like the back of his hand. We had to choose two routes: a long one, which passed in an arc along well-worn dirt roads through a number of towns and villages, and a short one, which went through deaf and uninhabited territories, and where the road itself was called two tracks, whether badly or well rolled on the ground.
The latter option would have allowed us to save two days, as well as half a barrel of gasoline (however, gasoline was then very cheap). Naturally, we chose the second option. We left early in the morning, hoping to overcome the route in a day. And at first everything went well. We even allowed ourselves the luxury of hunting a bustard for an hour, a very cautious bird.
Vadim managed to shoot her, thus providing us with a great dinner. We continued to move, but with the onset of night, the steppe road, already barely visible in the headlights, began to be distinguished worse and worse, and then the track completely disappeared, as if it had merged with the steppe. This is usually a phenomenon for Turgai.
Vadim decided to wait until morning and continue his journey at dawn. They spread a felt mat, quickly plucked, gutted and roasted the game on a blowtorch and, taking out bread, tomatoes, cucumbers and melons, had a feast under the starry Asian sky. We had hardly finished our meal when a mysterious light appeared in the distance.
It seemed that he was no more than three kilometers from us and was moving slowly. Perhaps it was a motorcyclist driving with the headlamp on on the road we had lost. Naturally, there was a desire to go in that direction, but Vadim, closely watching the moving light, said: “This is a mirage. Maybe someone travels 40 kilometers from here, but we will start at dawn, as we have planned."
Soon the mysterious fire disappeared, and only large stars, strewn with a pitch-black sky, shone on us. In the morning, not without difficulty, using both the compass and the map, we took the desired azimuth and soon "hooked" the lost track. She was in a completely different place than the fire we had seen the day before. By the evening of the second day we arrived safely at Semiozernoe, never seeing the lights again.
And here is another similar example, but not with such a favorable ending. On a warm July evening, a truck with two Aktobe geologists and a driver left the resort village of Kos-Istek near Aktobe to the south towards Arkalyk. The Kazakh driver drove along a short route along the deaf steppe paths. Presumably, they also saved time and gas.
With the onset of night, the driver, like us, lost track, but instead of waiting for the morning, he could not think of anything smarter than asking the geologists to go and look for the lost road, which, in his opinion, was somewhere nearby. Naturally, he left the headlights on and, by agreement, honked from time to time. The geologists went one to the left and the other to the right of the truck. The driver waited for them for several hours, but they did not return. He honked desperately, switching low beam to high beam. It was all useless. People fell through the ground.
Waiting for the morning, the driver prudently rushed back to report what had happened … At the base of the expedition they immediately sounded the alarm, realizing how this could end for people left without water and shelter. By radio, we contacted all the field teams of geologists working in the nearby territories, and with the Aktyubinsk airport.
A small plane from AED took off in search. The pilots managed to locate the missing geologists at the beginning of the third day of searches. Alas. They were both dead. The sun killed them on their first day in the semi-desert. Almost everyone who knew this story believed that the mysterious mirage lights of Turgai were the main reason for the death of Aktobe residents. There is no doubt that the geologists mistook the mirage light for the headlights of their car and went further and further into the semi-desert.
And this is far from the only case. One Russian chauffeur from the city of Shevchenko (now Aktau), who has traveled around Kazakhstan all his life, told me that every year he takes away several chauffeur lives and that experienced drivers always try to ride in tandem with another or several necessarily serviceable cars, a supply of fuel and water, and in the winter - also vodka. Alcohol is taken not for pleasure, but in case of severe frost to warm the body.
My old friend Oleg Ksenofontov, who has worked in Kazakhstan for about 40 years, told me another story. He not only remembered and confirmed what I told the readers, but also gave another interesting example of "geological everyday life". One of the field detachments of Leningraders carried out geological surveys on the coast of the Aral Sea.
About once a week, a car with drinking water and food came to the field workers. One day the car did not arrive on the appointed day. Having no more food and having used up almost all the fresh water, the geologists decided to walk to their base. The distance was not very great, about 30 kilometers. We left before dawn in order to have time to overcome the path to the maximum sun.
Despite the great experience of their leader, they got lost in the semi-desert. They were all in danger of death, but chance helped. Geologists managed to reach a large burial ground, inside of which, even in extreme heat, cool reigns. There they hid from the sun. And the expedition vehicle soon arrived and, not finding people, returned to the base.
It is understood that a search was immediately organized. Already on the second day, the geologists were found. All of them were barely alive from a nervous shock, and the chefs of the detachment - a young girl - had to be hospitalized. She was delirious and told some stories. Fortunately, after a month she recovered, but she was strictly forbidden to be in the heat of the steppe.
The nature of the mysterious lights in Turgay has not yet been fully investigated. And no one can claim that these lights are just a mirage.
From the book "True Stories and Encounters with the Paranormal"