How salt “grows” and mud heals: A report from a salt works in the Asht district

The Asht district is famous for its salt. Here it is produced in an unusual way — grown in open ponds, where sun and wind evaporate the brine over months. The district is also home to another attraction: the healing salt lake of Aksikon. We traveled to the district to see for ourselves how Asht salt is born, and what lies beneath the white crust of this unusual lake. From Khujand to Shaydon — the administrative center of the Asht district — is about 100 kilometers. But our destination was not the district center itself, but the former settlement of Solprom, where the Asht salt deposit is located. Turning off the main road toward the settlement, we spotted an oncoming car. We stopped it to ask for directions, not expecting that the driver would turn out to be exactly the person we needed.

By a happy coincidence, we rode all the way to the salt works with the director of the Namaki Asht enterprise. The entrance to the settlement is marked by concrete structures that appear to have survived from Soviet times. They bear the name of the enterprise and a quote with a distinctly Soviet ideological ring: “If you want to be healthy, be sensible. Use only iodized salt. ” Solprom itself was once a typical company town. The enterprise’s employees lived and worked here. Many still live here today, though far from all of them are still connected to salt production. The Asht enterprise Koni Namak has existed for nearly a hundred years. But the history of salt extraction in this area is far older — salt was harvested here more than a thousand years ago. Centuries have passed and the technology has changed, but not dramatically. How salt “grows” The Asht salt deposit stretches for about 20 kilometers and ranks among the major salt sites in Central Asia. In Soviet times, the salt…