Welcome to the fourth of a series of eight weekly posts covering the eight countries I visited this fall. My journey was epic and I chose not to write posts while traveling, in an effort to be engaged and present on this amazing odyssey. This is my honest opinion of my personal experience. I hope you will enjoy reading my posts covering all that happened over the two months of travel – The Good, The Bad & The Beautiful. Today I share about the unusual country of Turkmenistan – Ashgabat and Beyond.

Where The Heck is Turkmenistan?

Don’t fret if you have never heard of this country. It definitely is under the radar for most people. This map shows Turkmenistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia. With only 7 million people, it is the smallest of the Central Asian countries. Turkmenistan is one of the least visited countries in the world due to the difficulty in obtaining a visa, and its totalitarian regime.

The Good

Our visit to this somewhat strange and interesting country was the start of a month long tour with Intrepid Travel. On arrival in Turkmenistan we met the ten other seasoned travelers we would spend the next four weeks with. This is our second tour with Intrepid, which does unique small group tours. We loved our Bolivia tour and felt confident Intrepid would be perfect for us to visit the Five Stans. It surely was, and our group was wonderful too.

Turkmenistan – Ashgabat and Beyond is not an easy place to visit…or to understand. But being with a tour certainly helped smooth the way.

The Bad

The country is widely criticized for its poor human rights, including for its treatment of minorities, and its lack of press and religious freedoms. Since its independence from the Soviet Union was declared in 1991, Turkmenistan has been ruled by repressive totalitarian regimes: that of President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in 2006; Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who became president in 2007 after winning a non-democratic election (he had been vice-president and then acting president previously); and his son Serdar, who won a subsequent 2022 presidential election described by international observers as neither free nor fair, and now shares power with his father. (Wikipedia)

The Turkmenistan government has been described as stricter than North Korea. Few Turkmen citizens leave their country. Some do go abroad to study, and others travel if they can afford it. But most do not.

But our visit to Turkmenistan did not include any information on the above. The Turkmen people, including our guide, are very proud of their country and respectful and cautious of criticizing. But as an outside observer, I have to tell you, Ashgabat felt like Disneyland. A movie set. A facade. Let me start from arrival.

Entering Turkmenistan

After an overnight flight from Istanbul we arrived Ashgabat at 2:00am to find a long and confusing entry process. To visit Turkmenistan you must have a “Letter of Invitation” which we obtained before arrival with assistance of Intrepid. On arrival we got in line to purchase our visa at a cost of $125 USD, paid in cash on arrival.

What we didn’t expect though, was a requirement also to have a Covid test before being allowed to enter. At an additional cost of $50 USD – cash of course. All of this line waiting and cash exchanging took about an hour. Eventually we retrieved our luggage and found our tour guide waiting for us and four others who were on the same flight. As we waited, we had time to admire the marble airport, with soaring ceilings. Most of the people at the opulent airport were armed guards rather than visitors -our first sign that something strange is happening here.

Hotel

Our lovely guide Ejesh explained to us in the van on the way from the airport that we had been moved to a different hotel than what we expected. Apparently the original hotel was now being taken over by the government to host some foreign dignitaries. Instead we ended up in a strange little hotel outside of the city. We had expected to be in the city, and had paid for a nice hotel. Disappointing and all very strange.

When we woke in the morning we had a full day until our group arrival meeting at 5:00pm. But now that we were so far out of town we couldn’t really wander. We didn’t feel confident enough to take a taxi into town, not knowing even where to go, so we napped and relaxed until our meeting.

Internet and Social Media

Despite my study and feeling prepared to enter Turkmenistan, I was astonished to learn social media is banned. No where in all my reading before leaving the USA did I see this. Internet was nearly impossible to come by and all social media platforms are banned. We could not get VPN to work.

Welcome to Turkmenistan – Ashgabat and Beyond

We were jet-lagged but very curious about this country. We were also anxious to meet our group who we would spend the next four weeks with. In a situation like this it takes a little time to feel each other out, but soon we all felt comfortable together.

Ashgabat

Our first evening after the meeting we headed out to a traditional Turkmenistan restaurant. The restaurant was inside a huge and sparkling marble mall. Like all the buildings in Ashgabat it was new and fancy in keeping with the Ashgabat image of rich and beautiful.

It’s hard to say if Ashgabat is good or bad. There is some of both. It is certainly beautiful I’ll give it that, but it just did not feel ‘real”.

Day two we headed out for a very full day of sight seeing. We were shuttled from monument to monument on what seemed a very restricted tour. Dozens of monuments honoring the great men that are deemed important by the government. Everyone from historic Turkmen philosophers to Lenin to the current President and his family have monuments built to them. As you drive around this city you can not miss that there is not a pothole, or a dead bush or a piece of litter. Everywhere workers are touching up paint, sweeping and pruning. The white marble city is perfect in every way. And every car in the city is white. Only white cars are allowed. It was a bit freaky.

Things will be quite different a couple of days later when we leave the city. More on that below.

All That Glitters

The full day tour turned into a night tour after sunset with the glittering city aglow in sparkles. Every monument and every building fully lit – from our rooftop restaurant we could admire the colorful scene.

Throughout the city we also noted that there was a uniform way of dressing; men and boys in black suits. School age women in girls all wore the same long dress and head covering; young girls in pink, high school girls in green, university in red. We had the pleasure of meeting a group of high school kids on a field trip. They were all thrilled to meet us. Meeting visitors is rare.

Many recent restrictions have been imposed on women regarding the right to drive and beauty care. This article is astonishing to those of us who take those freedoms for granted.

All of that said, the people we did meet seemed happy.

Akhal-Teke

On the day we were scheduled to leave Ashgabat we had a half day more in the city. Due to the debacle with the hotel, we were given an added activity for the morning. We could visit the Turkmenistan History Museum or go to a stable to learn about the famous Akhal-Teke horses. Arne and I chose the horses and everyone else chose the museum.

The Akhal-Teke is a horse from Turkmen, in the southern region of the modern country of Turkmenistan. These horses have been renowned as cavalry mounts and racehorses for some 3,000 years. The Akhal-Teke has superb natural gaits, and is the outstanding sporting horse from this area. Queen Elizabeth was a fan and owned several.

We had a private guide take us to a gorgeous stable about 40 min outside of the city. Back home we would call this a ranch and it was hands down the cleanest most pristine ranch/stables I have ever been to. We had a personal tour by the lovely gentleman owner whose family has been raising Akhal-Teke horses for multiple generations. We did not regret choosing this option over the museum. In fact, when our time in Turkmenistan was done, this was my favorite thing we did.

The Bad & The Beautiful

That afternoon we loaded up our group into three separate jeeps to begin the long trek out of the city. We were warned the roads would be bad. Bad is an understatement. After the perfection of Ashgabat, the quality of the roads on this very long drive was downright appalling. For hours we bumped and swerved over huge potholes and unbelievably poor conditions. It really began to dawn on us that Ashgabat is the only place in this country that the government is investing in. Out here along these dusty horrific roads the people are living in simple villages, tending gardens, herding goats and subsisting.

The average salary in Turkmenistan is between $200-$400 USD per month. The few meals we paid for in this country were in Ashgabat and we paid about $30USD including wine. These meals were at pretty fancy restaurants. Incredibly though, gas here is .40 cents a gallon. Turkmenistan is rich with oil and natural gas.

Darvaza Gas Crater

Often called The Door to Hell, Darvaza Gas Crater was our destination – finally arriving after dark. What is this crazy place?

The Darvaza gas crater is a burning natural gas field collapsed into a cavern near Darvaza, Turkmenistan. Hundreds of natural gas fires illuminate the floor and rim of the crater. The crater has been burning since the 1980s. How the crater formed is unknown, but engineers ignited the crater to prevent poisonous gases from spreading.

Located about 260 kilometres (160 mi) north of Ashgabat, it has a diameter of 60–70 metres (200–230 ft) and a depth of about 30 metres (98 ft). (Wikipedia)

Over the years there have been concerns about the health affects of the gas on the surrounding area. Nonetheless the Door to Hell has become a very popular tourist destination. Recently many Yurt villages have popped up to accommodate tour groups like ours. We stayed one night here and headed out early again in the morning for more bumpy roads.

Kunya-Urgench

The very long and bumpy ride brought us to Kunya-Urgench UNESCO Heritage site, one of the oldest sites in Turkmenistan. Also known as Old Urgench or Urganj, it is a city of about 30,000 inhabitants in north Turkmenistan. It is the site of the ancient town of Gurgānj, which contains the ruins of the capital of Khwarazm. Its inhabitants deserted the town in the early eighteenth century in order to develop a new settlement, and Kunya-Urgench has remained undisturbed ever since.

This site contains several ancient structures including a mausoleum. The ancient buildings are considered some of the first where intricate tile work was used. For thousands of years these buildings have survived, even including a rampage by the infamous Genghis Khan.

I really enjoyed this stop on our tour, although getting here was not fun. I’d be hard pressed to recommend it to most people, as it really was painful driving. If Turkmenistan wants to attract visitors, the roads outside of Ashgabat are a huge problem.

And guess what? After our tour we had to get back into the jeeps. Ugh.

Border Crossing

A quick lunch stop and then a bat-out-of-hell drive to get to the border with Uzbekistan before it closes at 6pm. Seriously? Wow. And we made it with 30 minutes to spare. It was all a bit frantic. I hope Ejesh our guide was shown gratitude by everyone in our group, despite the border chaos. She helped us through the first part of the exit from Turkmenistan and showed us where we get on a small bus to ride through what is known as “no mans land”, the buffer zone between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Then she was gone and our little group was on our way.

The bus takes us to the Uzbekistan entrance where we went through passport control and luggage screening and then on foot continued to the final entrance to Uzbekistan where our new guide Svetlana was waiting. She was a sight for sore eyes, as was the beautiful huge and comfortable coach and well paved roads. Uzbekistan was looking pretty good…and we were happy to arrive.

Final Thoughts

I am grateful I had the opportunity to experience Turkmenistan, but I don’t have any desire to return. Looking back on it now I really wonder what is going on behind the scenes. I felt like I was being watched. What was happening behind the walls of all those marble buildings? Are people really happy? Safe? Turkemenistan Ashgabat and Beyond.

It was a crazy start to what would be an amazing 28 day tour, and things got better and better in the weeks ahead. Please come back next Friday for a post about Uzbekistan…a gorgeous and interesting country I would certainly return to.

Thanks for reading my post Turkmenistan – Ashgabat and Beyond. We love it when you pin, share and comment on our blog posts. Be sure to check out last week’s post Baku Azerbaijan and continue to follow our odyssey in Central Asia – next Uzbekistan.