Is there water in the hot sand?

First, we drove along the road. It was asphalt and not not even cobblestone pavement. It was the sand. Up - on the dune and down - with the dune. Under the wheels with the gnashing of teeth cracked and crumbled dry, half-rotten Haloxylon. High kicking up his hind legs, skedaddle gophers. With the space velocity disappeared gray lizards. In the depths of the sky. motionless, as if nailed, hung an eagle. On any map of Turkmenistan in the heart of the Karakum specified locality Kazi. There is not a permanent resident. Not one! Thousands flock of sheep crowded around the two wells. Sheep bleated, running from well to well, climbed on each other, stepping on his feet, muzzle to the eyes dipped in cold murky water. Beside the shed were two dromedary, with contempt watching sheep pandemonium. Wells in shallow Kazi - three meters. The walls are lined with wooden block of wood. Top there is no superstructure - just framed by four logs hatch. Durdy Mamedov, with bloodshot eyes from the desert winds, peeling of bright red skin on the face, was standing over the manhole well, his legs wide apart. Strong, sinewy hands, he lowered a bucket into the well, scoop water, pulled out and poured into a long wooden trough. Water enters the sheep's eyes, ears. Sheep violently shook his head, snorted, but it seems to have been very torrid South-Eastern deserts. Cormorants in the middle of the desert? That cormorants - objected katerschik Nikoliuk. - Here are all now have. And the seagulls are, and thirty pounds of catfish and carp, and even sturgeon. Already sturgeon something here is not settled. And where did they come from? We sailed through the channel. He was a wide, very wide. As Neva in Leningrad. And in some places and wide. Every ten or fifteen miles the way we blocked by floating dredges. They expand and deepen the channel. The channel will now be able to walk even ships. Small, of course. But nonetheless very real sea. Kazi, how I saw it - yesterday desert. Preserved, but its value so far. Well, where's the day today. And tomorrow? The boat went against the tide. Walking at high speeds - something about seventy miles per hour. Elegant nose hydrofoil boat ride up high above the water - an unusually blue and remarkably transparent. Ahead of us was flying cormorant. He did not collapse and with each passing minute, weakening, lower and lower sank into the water. Finally, unable to withstand competition with the technique, he turned toward the shore. Canal banks completely overgrown with a strong yellow cane. At the three-meter height majestically swaying his fluffy panicles. First reed happy: decorating channel, and animal feed. Many flocks of wandering along the banks of the channel - from Mary and to stretch Zahmeta grazing farms "Moscow", "Karakum", "Bairam-Ali." Reed neatly clipped businesslike sheep. But Reed did not give up: on and on leaving it in the water. Went to where the sheep could not get him. Had to contend with the stubborn cane by other methods. Brought from the Far East voracious fish carp. And now it methodically eats away all the plants, contaminating the channel of the channel. I was driving along the Karakum Canal, and recalled a recent conversation in Ashgabat with the engineer of the Institute Hydroproject Petr Petrovich Fedoryakovym. On his desk lay a map of the fourth stage of the channel. Builders plan for the next five years to bring the channel from Geok-Tepe to Kizyl-Arvat. And to eighty year - to join him with the Caspian Sea in an area Krasnovodsk. Cotton, grapes, radishes, onions, - said Fedoryako - virtually all irrigated agriculture of Turkmenistan holds the water channel. It is beneficial cheap. Recognizing in principle, all methods of extraction of water in the desert, Fedoryako convinced that only the channel absolutely solve the problem of water Turkmenistan. Only channel. And not one Karakum, but also others that will be built in the future. In the north - along the ancient dry river bed Uzboy. In the center - on salt-marsh basin Unguz. And dozens of small drainage channels, as life-giving network of wrinkles, furrow dry face of the desert. However, whether so dry in the Karakum desert? Who has not heard about takyrs - flat clay areas, which during the rainy season at the time turned into a huge lake. Do not get all this moisture? Is it possible to create underground reservoirs of fresh water? In recent years, the Institute of Deserts conducted several experiments with takyrs. Nicholas Lalymenko and Sahatdurdy Ber-dyev organized natural laboratory on five hundred acres takyrs in the distant well Saynak Sac. Takyr had plowed deep furrows, trenches, a sort of "bags of water", in which water is collected. Between the trenches were planted grape, elm, ailanthus, pistachio. Were seeded melons. The first experiments were successful. The laboratory staff of local waters in the same institute V. Kunin, and G. Leshchina-sky went the other way. Five years ago, on a test takyr they dug a huge pit. At the bottom of the pit drilled three dozen wells. Under the ground formed a giant water storage system - the sixty thousand cubic meters. However, the store - it's the wrong word. Fresh water in the surrounding sand and salt waters as freely floating, and it was easy to extract from there through the hole. Margin of this water would be enough to shepherd the year twenty teams. Takyrs, of course, proven way of collecting and storage of fresh water. But they, unfortunately, is not everywhere. I asked Yazklycheva Sheehy, Director of the State Farm Baharden, whether favorably artificial takyrs. Benefit, of course - said Sheehy. - But despite what - and he laughed. - Asphalt takyr area per hectare with all the associated facilities costs fifty thousand. But such takyr in only two or three months a year. And then - do not bother you a question: is there any reason to asphalt desert? Yes, it is reasonable in this case, of course, is not enough. But what can you do if you do not have my natural takyrs? Sheehy Yazklychev together with the engineer Vyacheslav Chabrier recently proposed the idea of ??plastic takyr. This spring, the first experiment was conducted. Imagine this picture. The car brings into the wilderness double roll of film sewn strong silk thread. The size of a roll - one hectare. Film is half the price of asphalt. It can be moved to any convenient place. From May to October - in time of drought - the film is removed. The experiment was started, wait for the results now. But the idea is very tempting! Once the do not call the desert! Waterless, parched, hungry, dry, dead, scorched, empty, naked ... But this is not true. All these terms apply only to the surface of the desert, its sand shell. And at the bottom, under a thick layer of sand, almost the entire length and width of the Karakum desert lapping set of underground seas. And do not blame the desert is that of the seas, these people have learned recently. The first discovery was made in the early fifties in western Karakum Desert, near the Kopet Dagh. Surprised himself by hydrogeologists found under the sand dunes huge stocks of excellent drinking water. In 1963 he began operation of this field, called Yashanskim, Geologists believe that the local underground sea contains ten cubic kilometers of fresh water. Over the centuries, rain permeated the sand dunes. Covered in depth filtered. Then partially unravel, squandered. A partially assembled in one place in a kind of water lens. Sometimes these freshwater lens is stable lie on waterproof box. Sometimes - as, for example, in Yashane - free float on the surface of a giant underground pools of salt water difficult. The desert was like a box with a secret. • Outside the bare, untreated wood. And the castle. Sumeesh open it - get what you want. Our geologists have come close to unlocking the secrets of this "castle". The Soviet people have already squeezed out of the sands and oil and gas, and sulfur, and gold. Now they learn to take water from the desert. And it would be. The desert will give a person as much water as he needs.