emilyonearth

So, Turkmenistan… Where do I start?

A couple of years ago I had never even heard of the country, and now there I was, on a flight from Istanbul to Ashgabat, going to visit one of the world’s least visited countries. Despite all the hassle with getting my Letter of Invitation sorted, and then the passport number on it corrected, actually arriving in Turkmenistan and exchanging my letter for a visa was surprisingly easy! I just showed up at the visa counter in the arrivals area, right next to the “bank” counter when all the Turkmenistan citizens were lining up for unknown reasons, and handed them the Letter of Invitation along with my passport. They stamped a piece of paper a couple of times and sent me off to the bank, where I was ushered forwards in front of all the locals – I guess visa fees make them more money that whatever everyone else was doing at the bank!

In theory, Turkmenistan has seven “international” airports, but Ashgabat is the only one that actually has international flights, and so this was the starting place for our tour. It’s a difficult city to explain – it’s eerie, unsettling, sterile, uncanny. Often called the White City, Ashgabat consists largely of hundreds of massive marble buildings with a huge amount of empty space around them. They all look the same, but our guide tells us they are shops, apartments, universities, government buildings… Turkmenistan is the world’s largest importer of marble in the world, and this city very much explains why!

A personal highlight was seeing the Ruhnama (aka Book of the Soul) statue, even if it was just through the window of the bus. This is a book that was written by Turkmenistan’s first president which was essentially a propaganda tool that was part religious text, part (somewhat imaginary) Turkmen history, part code-of-conduct, and part autobiography.

Speaking of Turkmenistan’s first president, he was, in fact, a crazy man. His family was killed in the 1948 earthquake that flattened Ashgabat, so he had a hard start to life, but really, that’s no excuse. As the first president of the country after the fall of the Soviet Union, he gave himself the title Türkmenbaşy, or Head of the Turkmens, and then renamed various places around the country after himself, changed the Turkmen language so that the months and days of the week were now named after himself and his family members, and had parliament announce him “President for Life”. He is often best known for his unusual policies: Hospitals and libraries were only allowed in the capital city, whereas dogs were forbidden there. Lip-syncing was banned, along with opera, ballet, the circus, and playing music on your car radio. Men could not (and still cannot) have beards or long hair. He created a national holiday dedicated to melon. While this craziness seems mostly harmless, under his government the Turkmen people had extremely poor human rights, and his presidency was considered one of the most totalitarian dictatorships of the time. Life expectancy in Turkmenistan dropped by 15 years during his reign. When he died in 2006, he was succeeded by his dentist.

Out at Nisa, we had our first photography tax experience – at various sites around Turkmenistan, they charge you a 50 manat fee if you want to take photos, even if it’s just the odd phone-photo. At the official exchange rate, this would be a NZ$25 fee, which is insane, but when we arrived our guide helped us exchange our money at the significantly more favourable unofficial rate that meant this fee was now NZ$5 (which is still a little crazy for a couple of photos, but at least it’s not $25!!)

After the markets, we got on the road headed north and swapped the city for the desert. It was a long drive, and the road was in very poor condition, but it was an interesting trip seeing the interior of the country. Outside of Ashgabat coloured vehicles are allowed, but still the large majority of cars we saw were while. The houses throughout the country were like those on the outskirts of Ashgabat – white with green roofs. On the roads, no one stuck to their side of the road, or even to the actual road itself, as cars and trucks swerved all over the place, trying to avoid the potholes that seemed to make up more of the road than not. On several sections people had taken to just driving through the sand on the side of the road instead of bothering with all the swerving.

After several hours’ drive we stopped at the first of two natural sinkholes that we were to visit. They were both caused when underground pockets of natural gas had collapsed, and this first one had since filled with water. Natural gas is still being released, and you can see it bubbling up through the water.

We spent the night just metres away from the crater in a yurt camp, which was an experience in itself. Once night arrived the hedgehogs came out and were scurrying around the campsite, which was a novelty. It wasn’t the most comfortable night of my life, but it also wasn’t terrible, and we were back on the road (and the potholes) again by 6:30 the next morning.

Our final day in Turkmenistan was largely spent driving to the north of the country where we crossed the border into Uzbekistan. Before that, though, we made a stop at another of Turkmenistan’s World Heritage sites: Kunya Urgench. It’s an ancient Silk Road settlement, and a sacred place for the Muslim population who consider three trips here to be equal to a visit to Mecca. The buildings are largely in ruins, but are still very impressive. The local people visiting the site seemed very curious about us being there – several asked for photos with us, and I very much enjoyed watching a group of young boys trying to convince each other to come over to us and say hello.

Finally, some more Turkmenistan facts for you:

• Petrol costs between NZ 10-15 cents per litre (or 50-75 cents at the official exchange rate)
• Residents pay less than NZ$100 per year for their electricity, gas, water etc. Before 2019, these were all provided for free to citizens.
• Income tax is around 2%.
• Turkmenistan ranks as one of the worst countries in the world for freedom of press and censorship of information.
• 80% of the country is desert.
• Many of the monuments are the same size in metres as the year they were built – for example, the Neutrality monument was build in 1995, and is 95m tall.
• The Akhal-Teke horse breed is a national treasure. The horse on the national emblem is a real, live horse, and once it dies, the image on the emblem will be replaced with that of a new horse.