goldmiteee

[goldmiteee]

My experience of geochemical trip to the dried areas of Aral sea

So, after a second year of my geological studies I wanted to get some field experience. One of my professors offered me an internship in his company so I obviously immediately agreed to it.

I won't be talking much about how we got there, I'll just say it wasn't exactly easy.

This place is hostile to anyone. Constant wind and dust storms (also, dust here contains a lot of pesticides), temperature drops drastically after the sunsets and it's really hot out there at daytime (up to 43°C and it was a middle of September).

We were there for one month, living in tents. There's one thing in particular that made it really hard for me to live there — salt layer on the surface, which you can see in pictures 4 and 5. It was so hard and sharp, that it made sleeping comfortably in my sleeping bag almost impossible (low temperatures and strong wind also added up to it). I also once tried to taste it. It wasn't great. Salt there tasted really bitter and had an awful chemical aftertaste.

My job was simple and mostly physical— collect and label samples of soil with, and gather the underground air with a piece of rebar, hollow tube, sledgehammer and a syringe. We worked 8 hour shifts everyday with one 15 minute lunch break at the middle of the day. It was pretty exhausting. Every time we got back to our camp one of us had to cook a dinner for others, then we prepared air reservoirs for our chromatography machines, and laid samples in the sun for them to dry.

Overall it was interesting to get some experience in lithology, learn how chromatography works and test my own resilience.

Feel free to ask questions!

[goldmiteee]

I hate that feeling when you're thirsty AND gave to pee simultaneously. Like bro. We already have this water in us, use it again no biggie.