Dashoguz – Türkmenistan

I won’t lie, I never do, much to the frustration of Rut, but I never knew Turkmenistan was such a badass place to go, apparently the North Korea of Central Asia and receiving less tourists, approximately 10,000 per annum. Its borders had only just opened on April 1^st after closing them for three years due to the pandemic, although in hindsight and after further research after my visit I assume this was more down to a good excuse to exercise absolute control by its authoritarian leadership. The question is therefore why allow any tourists? No one could answer this, our guide said the country was happy with the current level of tourism and had no plans to change it. The reason why numbers are low are because few people know of the place nor why its worth a visit, and visas are rejected if the tiniest of errors are made in the paperwork, and they love their paperwork. I was anxious about the border crossing from Uzbekistan as people on a previous tour said the Turkmen border was strict and in particular liked to confiscate medication, a fact backed up by government travel advice. It was therefore a bad time for me to discover that peppermint oil capsules help greatly to keep my gut in order when travelling and I had a box of 100 stashed in my luggage to get me through two months. Who cares about peppermint oil!? But surely a box of 100 pills doesn’t look good on any scanner alongside the regular travel pharmacy of Imodium and paracetamol. Certainly the Turkmen customs guys didn’t care as they nodded me through with nothing more than a humorous curiosity that my middle name was George. Leading up to this we had to undergo a rapid antigen test for Covid, described by our leader as merely a ‘formality’, and then we had to wait for over an hour as forms were filled out to make the payment for said test, the visa, and the administration fees. The border wasn’t busy as you may imagine, but the reason for the wait became evident when summoned to sign 12 separate pieces of paper, most of which had been filled out by hand. Alongside going through customs, getting the visa stamped was relatively effortless and met with smiley welcomes and zero hostility. A final passport check and registration at the border gate finally saw us ‘unleashed’ into one of the least visited and least populated countries on the planet.

Everything appeared pretty standard to begin with. Unlike Uzbekistan there was a nice mix of cars on the road imported from all over the world which appeared a relatively open and free thing to do, and should one wish, donkeys are still available. The first I saw appeared to be a self-driving donkey pulling a simple cart where two youths sat with their heads covered from the sun with jackets and looking down at their phones. The flat landscape theme continued. There were checkpoints along the road manned by a traffic cop with a big leather satchel clipped to his waist where ordinarily in such countries there would be a gun. However, here I’m guessing punishing people with paperwork is much more effective. We entered Dashoguz, Turkmenistan’s second city, on an empty six lane highway. Through the more built-up areas we saw girls dressed in green dresses indicating school uniform, boys wearing shirt and trousers indicating the same, and uni girls wearing all red dresses. We pulled up outside an unsuspecting hardware store, entered next-door and walked up a flight of stairs to be greeted by a fancy restaurant that was almost empty but tended by many staff. Our delicious food arrived promptly, the waiter spoke excellent English, we were waited on like royalty, and it cost no more than two US dollars. The black-market exchange rate is four times greater than the official rate, but still, I wasn’t expecting any of this.

Thinking nothing of it we rocked up to our hotel which was huge and fancy on the outside with a huge and fancy reception area decked in marble. Apparently the hotel was full, but it had an eery silence to it that suggested otherwise. The rooms were tired, the breakfast was shocking despite the huge (and empty) dining room, and the internet enabled nothing more than a few emails; social media and VPNs were blocked. Still thinking nothing of it, we went outside to explore without our guide who said it would be fine and no one would bother us. Opposite the hotel was a huge building built in the style of a traditional yurt, it was impressive, vast, and completely void of people. We took a few photos and wondered closer to the entrance until a couple of gardeners lounging in the shade of a tree in the distance shouted at us to go no further and so we made our retreat. A huge fancy building lay at a distance to our hotel and so we went to check it out, walking past many more gardeners that tended the well irrigated shrubs, trees and plants that lined the roads. I say tended but they were doing very little. It turns out the huge fancy building wasn’t so huge and had been deceptively close. It was apparently a wedding venue and so had some justification for being deserted, although thinking about it, it was a Saturday afternoon. Realising we were far from anywhere we gave up and retired to the hotel with suspicion that we had been placed there for a reason. Our first night in Turkmenistan was spent eating in yet another fancy restaurant with good food, friendly staff, and surprisingly cheap. Of course it was empty except for two small tables of locals yet once again our guide was surprised stating that it was usually full. Back at the hotel we did discover some music and a bar out the back which wasn’t quite empty but didn’t suggest a full hotel either. We enjoyed a few pints and I took pleasure in seeing an epic shooting star, as did our guide, and I followed up with some dozy joke about the president’s plane getting shot down by the Uzbeks. It wasn’t till the morning I realised it was a stupid thing to say in such a country, but the fact I am writing this after leaving would suggest that maybe we weren’t being watched as closely as the conspiracy in my head was assuming.

We had only 5 days in Turkmenistan, starting in the north and driving straight down the middle of the country on a single highway to Ashgabat, the capital in the very south. On our second day and after a morning visit to some ruins similar to those in Uzbekistan but not restored, we jumped into 4x4s and began our journey south along the highway that gradually deteriorated until calling it a highway, or road for that matter, would be misleading at best. Five hours later, halfway between Dashoguz and Ashgabat we pulled off the road and into the desert with a sandstorm in full swing. Not too far away we arrived at our overnight stop, The Door to Hell. It’s a glossy name for sure but in reality it’s a big hole in the ground that’s on fire and has been for a good five decades. How this happened is a bit sketchy, but the tried and tested story is that Soviet engineers were drilling for gas, the rig collapsed into a sinkhole and to prevent toxic gas harming people (bearing in mind this happened in an empty desert) they decided to set it alight to burn off the gas. Now the government is looking at ways to put out the fire, one of which includes blowing it up. For now, it’s a great tourist attraction that ironically attracts few tourists and there is no doubt that its an impressive sight at night, one we almost missed. At our classy yurt campsite we settled in for dinner and listened to the sandstorm get worse. Rain came and went, later in the evening the roof on one of the yurts would try to escape, and few wanted to make the 10-minute trek back to the crater. I was having none of it, the tiny lightbulb went off in my head indicating me to put on a raincoat and I headed on up to the crater to take in this once in a lifetime weird but beautiful spectacle. The weather eased slightly and I basked in the crater’s warmth, and the glory of still being able to muster the bother for such occasions. However, the glory abated a little in the morning as my guts continued to muster the bother on me, a wobble as I like to call it, unnerving but not out of control. Having prepared myself for the next 5 hours in a car the tour leader came over to me and pressed on me to make sure I didn’t need the bathroom because it would be ‘so bad’ if my guts erupted down the road. How did she know I was feeling wobbly? Did she poison me? Did a spying gardener inform her? Was the toilet monitored? Or was it more likely tour leader instinct, or the fact I was quieter than usual? We all know the likely answer, but it’s more fun to dismiss it.