Turkmenistan 🇹🇲
June 2023
Turkmenistan facts
Just to get to this country requires some staying power. While it was never easy to visit before covid, it was then 3 years completely closed and under lock down, and even now requires an invitation letter and a hefty price for a visa. That is kind of unfortunate since this special place in the world offers some different insights how life can be in 2023 …
Ashgabat
One really has to see this city to believe your eyes. This is a strange mélange of Las Vegas and Pyongyang which all these features and restrictions these cities bring to the mixture. Founded by the Russians in the late 19th century it really only began to flourish after gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 fuelled by an abundance of natural gas. Since then dozens of ministries & official buildings and hundreds of tall apartment buildings all plastered with white marble mostly from Italy. The wide avenues are mostly empty but life seems to come up at night when pretty much the entire city is illuminated, hence practically zero energy cost. This all culminated by the erection of an entire new part of the city (called the Olympic park including a huge outdoor! stadium) for the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts games in 2017.
Darvazza & Gas Crater
The next day we toured the ancient ruins of old Nisa before heading North towards the infamous gas crater. Alongside the terrible road we stopped in Erbent which offered insight towards village life in the desert in 2023!
After about five hours we finally reached Darvazza and the location of the gas crater. Again, something hard to describe if not being experienced on site with hundreds of flames burning, strong smell of gas and constantly having to watch the wind blowing even more heat in already 43 degree weather. But it was well worth the long trip especially during dusk and at night. The cool thing was that one can access the site all night since sleeping was provided in nearby yurts.
