Aktau: the city on the Caspian Sea built on a salt hill

Aktau's waterfront overlooks the Caspian Sea, the world's largest enclosed lake, animating promenades and venues with sunset views.

Minutes away, Sherkala Canyon, an isolated mountain shaped like a Mongol yurt, dominates the desert landscape surrounding the city with its unmistakable silhouette.

Heading inland, you reach the Valley of Castles, limestone formations carved by wind that resemble miniature medieval fortresses.

Toward evening, local restaurants serve fresh fish caught in the Caspian Sea, a specialty of western Kazakh cuisine rarely known elsewhere in the country.

The Caspian Sea, the world's largest enclosed body of water, remains contested among five nations for the exploitation of its undersea energy resources, with Aktau serving as Kazakhstan's principal port on its western coastline.

Aktau was built in the 1960s as a planned Soviet city to exploit the region's uranium and oil deposits, an industrial heritage still visible in the city's grid-based urban planning and numbered rather than named districts.