Chalk Cliffs and Salt Basin

Tuzbair Cliffs

Ustyurt Plateau

Mangystau

Kazakhstan

October 19, 2018

The Tuzbair Chalk Cliffs of Mangystau extend for twenty-four kilometers as they face the Great Salt Basin.

Nature sculpts and gouges an infinite variety of chalk-limestone cliffs and crevices, carvings and statuary that gleam with intensity and grandeur. 

The salt in the basin crackles beneath my feet.

In case you are wondering about chalk:

Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is an ionic salt called calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite shells (coccoliths) shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores.

 

Want more geology?

https://geology.com/rocks/chalk.shtml

 

From the Mangystau Ministry of Tourism:

https://mangystau.gov.kz/en/mesta/view/

 

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