- Title: Going To Extremes: The Silk Routes (Kazakhstan)
- Date: 25th April 2005
- Description:Geographer Nick Middleton,an Oxford academic with an interest in desertification,explores the hostile lands that lie on the ancient border between East and West,which,for millennia,could be crossed only via a network of ancient caravan ways known as the Silk Route. (episode four) Mid-latitude man Nick Middleton continues to explore the hostile lands that lie on the ancient border between East and West,travelling across Kazakhstan to the world's most toxic environmental disaster zone,Voz Island in the Aral Sea. Following the Kazakh water course across the desert,Nick starts his journey in the lush pastures of the Tien Shan,hunting with some of the world's last golden eagle falconers,before taking to the air to follow an ancient river course through the desert in a home-made microlite. Finally he arrives at the Aral Sea,the enormous lake that has been reduced to a shallow toxic sludge by mismanagement of the country's delicate water supply and overuse of chemical pesticides. To make matters worse,it hides an island that houses a former Soviet biological weapons testing centre,and no-one knows just how much anthrax,Q fever and botulism is left behind. Donning his biological weapons suit,Nick hitches a lift over there with some of the once-prosperous fishermen,who are now forced to look elsewhere for their income,to try and find out... Prod: Ben Roy; Dir: Matt Dickinson; Exec Prod: Zam Baring
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: KEO Films
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:Keo Films Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 4
- Transmission Date:25/04/2005
- Rights:Worldwide
- Decade: 2000s