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We woke up just before sunrise after yet another short night with little sleep. Temperatures were pleasant until the sun rose. We packed up, had breakfast, went for a short walk and then left the Darvaza crater to cross the Karakum dessert. The drive was good, even though I had to stop writing the blog posts many times due to the bumpy roads not making it easy on the stomach. This was our warm up drive for the crazy roads to come. Ashleigh managed to rack in ten thousand steps without ever leaving the car, also thanks to the bumpy roads causing her arms to flail adding steps to her accelerometer in the Fitbit. Does that count as exercise? There was nothing but desert for hours.
When we finally arrived in Konye Urgench, it was a relief to see some greenery. The sights around this world heritage sight were reconstructed quite well. The nearly 60m high minaret was the highlight of the area even though it’s leaning considerably due to the earthquake. After a hot walk around we made our way to the Uzbekistan border. Even though our Turkmenistan tour only lasted a few days (mostly because it’s so expensive to hire a guide per day), it still gave us great insight into a country that is very much off the radar. The border formalities went well and we made it through to the Uzbekistan side within an hour. A taxi pulled right up and was ready to take us to Khiva, our first stop! After a quick price negotiation we were on our way. It feels different already, more disorder, noises and people. It will be a nice change to be able to identify whether a building houses a restaurant or a bank (there were no logos or ads on any buildings in most of Turkmenistan). Our driver kept Alex entertained with the usual complaints of a tough life in a former Soviet country, but he was hopeful in sending his sons away to Russia so they can make real money one day. When we arrived at the hotel, the first thing was a long shower, and then we were invited for some watermelon and tea on the rooftop. We hid out for a while, escaping the heat and catching up on blogs and photos. It will be a short night most likely as we are still operating on minimum sleep. If the weather ever cools down we may explore parts of the walled city tonight! We did end up going out to get some money and food. All of the exchange places were closed except for one which only had smaller bills. We exchanged $20 and were handed back a stack of cash. The 1000 bill used to be the highest so to buy anything big, one would end up with a garbage bag full of cash. Dinner cost us one stack or one hundred thousand som. We walked through the walled city which is the neatest place, it makes me feel like I’m in some sort of movie set. We found a nice restaurant with a traditional feel and all ordered something authentic accompanied by draft beer! After sunset we got some water for the next few days and called it a night! The Lonely Planet guidebook labels Ashgabat a mix between Las Vegas and Pyongyang; from the air it did indeed look very lit up with neon lights, but once we got on the ground it was very different. The airport terminal was spotless and the white walls with golden trim made it look expensive. The terminal was built in the shape of a falcon, a very impressive first sight. The visa procedures didn’t take too long and after paying our fees we got the visa. We were the only ones on tourist visas from the flight. Our passport got checked a total of five times by different military and security personal, before we were allowed to exit. I almost got sent in for questioning but luckily my Russian came in handy to explain I was travelling with Ashleigh and we were just tourists and then they let us move on. When we finally made it out, we were greeted by our friendly guide. The drive to the hotel continued to impress, clean and new roads and everything looked like from a model city, it is even an offence to have a dirty car in the city - just perfect.
We had a short night since we only got to bed around 330am and woke up around 9amto our first view of our surrounding area: mountains behind the skyline and a city waiting to be explored. We left for the city around 10am and our guide explained the recent history of the country and city. He named off every building, most of which were ministries of some sort. The ministry of oil and mineral resources building was build in the shape of a lighter and there was even a ministry of horses. Our first stop was at the independence monument, an impressive pillar surrounded by historical rulers and other noteworthy individuals. Everything was in perfect symmetry and covered in gold leaf of course. We also stopped at the arch of neutrality, a tower with a revolving golden man on top, the most recent president Turkmenbashi who had ruled Turkmenistan for over 20 years. Our final stop in the city was the wedding palace near the five star hotel that looks identical to the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. Since we had some time left we drove outside the city to the Unesco World Heritage site of Nissa, an establishment still left over from the second century BC, used as a stopover along the Silk Road. All of the sites, it’s worth mentioning were empty, there were no other people around, a common phrase we would say often here, “Where is everyone!” It was almost too perfect to explore the beautiful sites all by ourselves. The fortress was decently preserved and some sections reconstructed, even Ashleigh was impressed with the Fort (if you remember, she was over Roman forts after seeing so many!)A lot of the city and Nissa suffered from the earthquake in 1948 that may have taken the life of as many as a 100,000 people and left the city in bad shape. On our way back we stopped at the Mausoleum of the most recent president to give our respects in a hall completely covered in white Italian marble. Near the mausoleum is the bigggest mosque in Central Asia, which can hold up to 10,000 worshippers and even has underground parking for over 400 cars. It was named after the latest leader and is a magnificent piece of architecture. We had it to ourselves of course and walked through the inside admiring the carpets and wall scriptures. At the end of our city tour we got dropped off at the hotel for some down time, which ended up being a short nap and a quick lunch before we hit the road again. It was time to say goodbye to Ashgabat and head north to the Karakum desert - which means black sand (even though we didn’t see much black sand at all). The drive out was on a good road and we only passed lonely camels and the Mongol rally cars. Apparently there is an annual rally that starts in Europe and crosses many areas of Central Asia before ending in Russia. All that’s required is a small car (like a Yaris or mini copper) and you just have to make it to the end, a challenge for many on the terrible roads! These cars were headed to the same spot as us, except they didn’t have A/C or four wheel drive. So far we have seen two types of travelers here, the extreme (like the rally drivers) and the retired, we didn’t really seem to fit in. A few hours later we arrived at our first crater, an artificial hole filled with water and bubbling gas, the second, another hole but with bubbling sulphurous mud. The final one: a massive crater that’s on fire day and night “The gates of hell”. It has been burning since the 70s and continues to burn. We arrived just before sunset and walked around the hole which was giving off heat and fumes. The inside temperature can be as high as a 1000 degrees Celsius, not a hole one wants to fall into (but it has happened). As the sun was setting we climbed up a small hill to take in the desert views. Temperatures slowly dropped below 40 degrees once we pitched our tents. We had shashlyk (skewers) for dinner, delicious mutton (sheep), chicken and veggies. A small visitor, a hedgehog came by after dinner to look for any scraps. A kid on a motorbike from a nearby village made his rounds offering to pick up cold beers from a settlement nearby. The mongol rally guys took him up on it, but we brought our own. Ashleigh and I walked around after dark to check out the crater. It was definitely something special to witness once the sky was star filled! Small eyes were reflecting back at us as our flashlight hit the sand: Spiders to Ashleigh’s dismay. It did cool down a bit overnight especially towards the morning but we did not need our sleeping bags otherwise. It is that time again - travel, blog, repeat. Our first official day wasn’t really blog worthy, since we just travelled to Houston and upon arriving at the hotel, the only exciting event involved us sitting at the hotel bar drinking a few ales before bed.
We woke up early the next morning and after eating the typical hotel breakfast, we decided to go straight for the pool to cool off. It was far from cool, but fun nonetheless. After checkout we picked up our rental car from the airport and headed south to the space centre. The space centre was quite busy, especially the space shuttle attached to the 747, which was probably the main attraction in the museum. We did glance over most of the written parts and instead opted for the visual education to learn more about the history of space travel. After some time wandering around we tried getting on the tram to actually see the command centre, but were told that we were too late, even though it was only 230pm and the place wasn’t closing for another three hours. We tried sneaking in at the back of the line, but the staff spotted us pretty quickly. Disappointed, we left and went back to reading stuff, this time related to the Mars project. We overheard someone talking about a nearby area that actually housed a full size rocket and so we got directions and headed there next. It was an amazing display, absolutely massive to say the least. We had a bit of time left before needing to be back at the airport and so we drove towards the coast until we found a beach. We even got to witness a casual wedding ceremony with Americans in shorts sitting in lawn chairs and then made our way back to the airport to catch our next flight out to Istanbul. It wasn’t the usual first day full of travel emotions and amazement of the new, but that will come. The long flight to Istanbul went by rather quickly and we even got some shut eye. We circled Istanbul a few times and then finally landed. The terminal was super busy so we found a quiet area until our next flight. We are now on the last leg of our trip to Ashgabat, where we wait for our flight at the exact same gate we traveled through 4 years ago. There are no other tourists on our flight, just locals and some foreign businessman it seems. That suits us just fine! More to come soon as we finalize our journey to get to Central Asia! |
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November 2022
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