The second stage of the day leads us to the tongue of the huge southern Inyltschek Glacier. It is 60 km long and measures 567 square kilometers. It is the second largest glacier in the world outside the polar regions. However, we do not see much of the eternal ice, which has been dramatically dwindling in Central Asia over the past few years, because the mass is covered by a meter-high layer of gray debris and a sea of rocks and stones. Every year, according to scientists' measurements, the glacier loses seven meters in thickness every year.