There is nothing here with a name on a signpost, and that is the point. The label comes from the saiga, the strange, bulbous-nosed antelope that has lived on these steppes since the days of mammoths, and the plateau's rim breaks away in cliffs, called chinks, that glow white, pink and ochre when the light is low.
The saiga story is one of the more hopeful ones in conservation. In the 1990s and 2000s poaching and disease cut the population to a tiny fraction of what it had been, and the animal was listed as critically endangered. Protection and a few lucky years brought a big rebound, especially in central Kazakhstan, although a mass die-off from bacterial infection in 2015 killed more than half of the world's saigas in a couple of weeks. It is a reminder that the animals here live on a knife edge. Seeing a herd moving over the plain, heads down and noses rippling, is the sort of luck you cannot plan.
Treat this as proper desert travel. Tracks across Ustyurt are mostly unsurfaced, can turn to sticky mud after rain and are marked by little more than other tyre tracks, so a GPS and a second source of navigation are not optional. The summers are fiercely hot, the winters bitter with wind, and spring and autumn are the best times, though even then nights are cold. There are no services for very long distances, so carry fuel, water and food, travel with another bike or vehicle, and tell somebody your plan. The nearest real supplies are in the towns of the surrounding regions, many hours away. Border zones in this part of Central Asia also need permits and attention to the rules.
If it goes well, the reward is the silence. The sky is huge, the horizon is very straight, and the only sounds are wind in dry grass and your own engine ticking as it cools. It will not be a day you forget.