A lesson in Soviet creation, Nukus certainly won't win prizes for prettiness anytime soon. But that's beside the point really, because out here, beyond the wind-blasted plains of the Central Asian Steppe, things are more about the gritty survival of the locals who once plied their trades along the shores of the Aral Sea. Talking of the Aral Sea, it takes just one visit to Nukus' acclaimed State Museum to see how the unstoppable retreat of its waters have affected this town and the semi-autonomous Karakalpakstan Republic as a whole. The one attraction that the Nukus tour guides can showcase here though, is the Nukus Museum of Art (also known as the Savitsky Museum), often considered the Louvre of the Soviet art world for its Stalin-esque masterworks aplenty.