Turkmenistan

It's been a while since I last put on a blog post and that's because we've been in the 'North Korea' of Central Asia - Turkmenistan. As such, I have deliberately waited until Uzbekistan to post this given the levels of security there. To put it into perspective, Lonely Planet won't publish the name of their author there for fear of retribution. It was a huge cultural shock going from Iran into Turkmenistan. The Russian aspect immediately hit us. For the next two hours we were marched around the border paying various fees and signing forms - by the time we left they had taken $140 from us including a $1 'disinfecting fee'. From the border we headed straight to Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. The best description I have heard of Ashgabat is that it is a cross between Las Vegas and Pyongyang. Everything, and I mean everything is made from white marble. The hospital is white marble, the stadiums are white marble and even the bus stops are made out of white marble. It was in our very grotty hotel (built by the USSR) that Charlie and I made the decision to go to the Darvaza gas crater. This was extremely risky since we were on a transit visa and deviation from a set route incurred a $1000 if caught; unfortunately the Devaza gas crater is about 240 km off route. I think Charlie will agree that they were some of the most stressful kms of our lives as we went through five police checkpoints praying that they wouldn't look too hard at our documents. After about 4 hours we finally arrived at the crater. It's an amazing site and if it were in a normal country I'm sure it would be packed with tourists but it was deserted as we drove up. As we were unpacking our stuff another car drove up, a family from the American Embassy. At first we were a little annoyed about this but being polite and British we offered to help put up their tent. They turned out to be the most wonderfully generous people and so shared their BBQ with us which was lovely as all we had was ration packs. The next day we somehow made it back to Ashgabat without being stopped and so set off towards the Uzbek border. Two days later we arrived; it hadn't been the most interesting two days as Turkmen landscape has a strong resemblance with the Martian surface. We knew the border was going to be tricky - our Turkmen visa ran out on the 16th but our Uzbek visa didn't start until 17th. We explained this to the border guards and we were told to wait until 22:00; this was at 13:00. Eventually we were called through and that's when the fun began. Having had our passports stamped, Charlie and I were separated. Being the driver of the car, they wanted to see my customs forms. I gave them all my forms but they couldn't find one. At this point they started shouting at me in Russian, I think accusing me of being a smuggler. Luckily they soon found the paper they were looking for and then started a full car search. This is fairly rare as the effort required is fairly substantial. They searched everywhere including inside our fold-up chairs. Once they had done this we were free to leave Turkmenistan but not enter Uzbekistan. As such we spent 2 bizarre hours in no man's land as the Turkmen border guards used our car as a smoking hideout away from their officers much like the far astro operates  at Radley. At 00:01 we were allowed into Uzbekistan and once we finally cleared customs at 02:00 we were absolutely shattered. Anyway through Uzbekistan and then it's the Pamirs! KBO

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