Some places look as though they were shaped not by nature, but by someone's imagination. Yangykala is one of them. "Fiery Fortresses" — that is what the canyon's name means in Turkmen, and standing on the edge of the cliff, you realise there is no better way to put it.
The canyon took shape more than 5.5 million years ago, when the waters of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol bay crashed through this land. When the sea retreated, rain and wind spent millennia sculpting this extraordinary landscape. The canyon walls rise between 60 and 100 metres, and the canyon itself stretches 24 kilometres across the desert all the way to the Kara-Bogaz-Gol bay.
Yangykala is famous for its dramatic cliffs painted in a vivid palette of white, yellow, ochre, violet and red. Locals have long given them a second name — Kyzyldag, meaning "Red Mountains." The most breathtaking views come at sunset, when the entire landscape ignites in fiery red and the earth seems to burn from within all over again.
In ancient times the canyon lay beneath the waters of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol bay, and today the luckiest travellers still stumble upon petrified shells and stones of strange and beautiful shapes. Few tourists make it this far — the journey is difficult and there is almost no infrastructure. But that is exactly what makes Yangykala so special: no fences, no crowds, no noise. Just you, the wind and several million years of history beneath your feet.
