We left Iran via a range of craggy mountains littered here and there with the rusting carcasses of crashed lorries. As we descended onto the flat desert scrub of Turkmenistan, we caught our first glimpse of one of the most extraordinary cities in the world, a cluster of white towers shimmering in the dust. As we approached the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat we saw women, beautiful women with flowing hair and tight-fitting dresses. After Iran, this was most shocking, the brazen hussies! Nic let her headscarf drop and we gawped at the dresses and head wraps in a clash of gaudy colours and were so relieved to see women being allowed to be women again (albeit women who made their clothes from 70s curtain fabric). But the women could not keep our gaze for long, Ashgabat was upon us.
Turkmenistan has been described as Central Asia's North Korea, a totalitarian system has been in place since independence from the USSR and tourists are only allowed to visit if accompanied by government minder. We were given a three day transit visa and were not really meant to see anything on the way. Amazingly, those three days turned into one of the highlights of the trip.
Turkmenbashi was the president of Turkmenistan from independence to 2006 when he died. Modern Ashgabat was his own little vanity project and his portrait still hangs in squares and on government buildings. Unlike sour-faced dictators like Mao or Lenin, Turkmenbashi is pictured in smiling catalogue poses, running through the mountains in a tracksuit or admiring an unseen view. Sadly, the gold statue that used to rotate with the sun has now been removed. What remains is a pristine city of gleaming white marble, vast municipal buildings and two-storey high TV screens showing the glories of Turkmenistan. An army of workers prune the manicured gardens, polish the gleaming chrome traffic lights and sweep the unsightly dust from the vast empty squares. It is illegal to have a dirty car so every vehicle, like every building, sparkles in the sun, reflecting the thousand bubbling fountains. Despite being a madman's theme park, the city somehow worked and we walked around with grins of disbelief on our faces.
The first three hotels we tried would not accept foreign tourists so we ended up in an ex-Soviet block governed by bulldog-faced babushkas. It was all peeling 1950s wallpaper, scuffed carpets and infinite faux laminate corridors. The people reacted to us shyly, it was clearly not normal to have a pair of unwashed outsiders dirtying the place up. The people in Central Asian sometimes look Mongol, sometimes Russian, often a mix of the myriad peoples that have swept across these lands.
The next day we managed to charter a taxi to the northern town of Konye Urgench. We had been physically pulled five different ways by eager taxi drivers and ended up with the one who pulled hardest. Our man was a member of that universal tribe, the Boy Racer. We tore out of town to ear-rupturing hip hop and the false modernity of Ashgabat soon gave way to scrubby desert. Yurts and camels appeared among the dunes as the road grew worse and the tunes got cranked up further. At times we were driving at a near 30 degree angle. Next the road were the broken bodies of rolled cars that had spotted the potholes too late. This was one of three major roads in the country and its destitution highlighted the absurdity of Ashgabat's 'perfection'. Bizarrely, in the middle of the desert, stood one solitary section of a modern flyover complete with lampposts and tarmac, going nowhere.
We finally arrived in Konye Urgench, a city once sacked by both Genghis Khan and Tamerlane but now is just a few ruins amongst dusty lanes and humble concrete houses. A 60m minaret built in the 14th century still survives, looking out toward the horizon for the ghosts of the Mongol horde.
After such a long and eventful day we retired to our 'hotel' 'bar' amongst golden swags and pink lacy alcoves . We were just enjoying a nice cold beer (after 7 weeks, even Berk tastes good) when the door burst open and a wedding party danced in trailing a glum looking bride in a cloud of white nylon. Before long we had downed a glass of port and found ourselves slow-dancing to some dreadful Turkmen pop. As the Euro-house blared on and the men got increasingly sweaty, Nic pointed out that we hadn't even managed to slow dance at our own wedding and now here we were, in a cheap roadside motel in Central Asia, drunk on port and Berk, dancing in a mass of vodka-crazed Turkmen.
It was quite some transit.
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