Turkmenistan – The city with no money limit or soul

July 6-8

Hello everyone!

One of my main regrets from living in Kazakhstan was that, for a variety of reasons, I didn’t visit any of its neighbours. This is something which I will partially rectify this summer, starting in one of the most secretive countries in the world: Turkmenistan.

Welcome to Weirdville!

A city of marble and growing pine trees in the Karakum desert

Turkmenistan is the size of Spain

It’s a country I’ve seen described as ‘North Korea Lite’, though I read that Turkmenistan receives one-fifth of the number of tourists. It’s easy to see the comparison when you look at some basic, damning statistics: ranked 178^th out of 180^th for freedom of press and with a leader who was re-elected with 97.7% of the vote in 2017. Internet does exist here but all social media and most news outlets are blocked. Pictures of the current leader and statues of the previous president are omnipresent. Not to mention that Turkmenistan is rather difficult to get into, requiring a letter of invitation and a guide at all times outside of the capital, Ashgabat.

Pictures of President Berdymukhamedov are even found on the plane

My hard-earned visa, which I was able to collect in Astana

Bugging of hotel rooms is said to be common, though I didn’t find any. Security officials can be a bit tense, with a female member of our group approached in the toilets of a mosque by a male soldier. There is a strict 11pm curfew keeping people off the street. Not that there seem to be many people on the streets in the daytime, either…

Security officials patrolling outside the hotel

The main roads have five lanes in each direction

Apparently Ashgabat – which means ‘City of Love’ – is a city of over one million people, constituting 20% of the country’s population. The lack of people visible as I walked and bussed my way around may have been to do with the weather – the temperature was almost always over 40°C. It was also the weekend and we saw a few more faces on Monday when leaving. Yet the capital struck me as a ghost town, a place which had been built before the people had arrived to live in it.

Some of the space-age bus stops in Ashgabat help to
protect passengers from the heat

Just the 44'C upon arrival...

The most people (excluding security) I saw at any time on a morning walk

The ghost town is dominated by one colour: white. More specifically, marble. When Turkmenistan became an independent nation in 1991 its leader, Saparmyrat Niyazov, embarked on a large construction project. With one catch: every building had to be made from marble. Genuine marble, which was imported from Turkey and Italy.

Turkmenistan gets its money from its large gas reserves,
which are the fourth biggest in the world

Our guide told us that Ashgabat is classed as the 'White City'
in the Guinness Book of World Records

Niyazov, who changed his name to ‘Turkmenbashi’, died in 2006 but the marble madness has continued with his successor, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. Many of the buildings are apartment blocks which look like the Tower of Terror ride from Disney. We were told that they were full but could see no sign of life on them.

Turkmenbashi translates as 'Father of the Turkmen'

Even the subways under the road are made of marble!

Not everybody lives in a mansion - these are flats close to my hotel

If the buildings are gleaming white, the roofs are a bit different. Though the modern high-rises are simply adorned with the rather ornate flag of the country, most older buildings have green tops. This is at the request of the government, so that it can ‘show’ that aforementioned flag…from the sky. Some of the roofs are strategically painted red for this reason.

The red stripe on the flag has five carpets, each representing
a province of Turkmenistan

Green roofs as seen from my hotel room

I noticed this for the first time as I flew into the wildly excessive airport, which cost $1.5 billion and is in the shape of a falcon. It may be for future planning, but it seems unnecessarily large and grand considering the lack of international flights to the country. With the constraints attached with getting a visa, it’s not as if large swathes of the world will be descending upon Turkmenistan anytime soon.

Randomly, there are direct flights from Birmingham in the UK

The falcon is one of many symbols of Turkmenistan

The few thousand who visit the capital are treated to some otherworldly sights and architecture. Take the city’s new stadium, built for the 2017 Indoor Asian Games. One end of the stadium has…a giant horse’s head. I’m assuming it’s made of marble.

I never got round to asking why an outdoor stadium was
needed for the 'Indoor' Asian Games

I wonder if you can watch the game from inside the head of the horse...

See the Palace of Happiness, a large wedding venue where people sign their marriage deeds in a large sphere showing a map of Turkmenistan. Or the new President Hotel, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the seven-star Burj Al-Arab in Dubai and is probably just as excessive inside. Complete with nearby golf course. In the desert.

The 'palace' has garish wedding rooms
which can host up to 1,000 people

The hotel is somewhat isolated

Then there’s the Arch of Neutrality. This used to be in the centre of the city but was moved by the current president, who I’m assuming didn’t want to open his curtains to the sight of a golden statue of his predecessor atop something which resembles a camera tripod. The statue of Niyazov used to rotate so he would always be facing the Sun.

Apparently Turkmenistan is one of only three 'neutral' countries
in the world, along with Switzerland and Austria

We were told that the mechanism broke during the movement
of the monument so it doesn't rotate anymore.
Not 100% convinced by that...

Niyazov concocted a sort of personality cult, with citizens being subjected to his varying whims. He wrote a book called the ‘Ruhnama’, or the ‘Book of the Soul’. Children had ‘Ruhnama’ lessons in school. There is, of course, a monument to this book, which interestingly isn’t used anymore.

One of his first slogans was 'Halk, Watan, Turkmenbashi' -
'People, Nation, Me'. Eerily similar to a German
leader from the 1930s...

At one point Niyazov changed the names of days
and months to names of his family members

This book was then given equality with other religious books such as the Quran, and writings from it can be found in Ashgabat’s largest mosque. Again, this building seems to show the lack of a plan – it can hold 10,000 people but is far outside the city, and we were told it is never full. Our guide didn’t know the cost of construction but estimated it would be in excess of $100 million.

Many countries like this enjoy records - this is the 'largest one-domed
mosque in Central Asia'

The height of the cupola is 63 metres

Beside the mosque is a mausoleum, housing the body of Niyazov and those belonging to his family. Most of his family died in 1948, when a massive earthquake destroyed the town and killed 110,000 people. This particular event is commemorated in a memorial complex, with a young Niyazov being proclaimed above the Earth. In gold plating, naturally.

Arguably one of the strangest things Niyazov did - and there's quite a list -
was to rename bread 'gurbansoltan', after his mother

Our guide said that locals used to think that an earthquake
was caused by a bull shifting the earth from one horn to another

The gold is used as Niyazov wanted this to
be a 'Golden Era' for Turkmenistan

All of these monuments are surrounded by official guards and security figures. When on my own, most seemed disinterested in my activity, with only one coming to talk to me when I had briefly stopped to read information from my book about the Presidential Palace. That building is strictly off-limits in terms of photography and two police officers approached me. Interestingly, they didn’t seem to speak Russian (most older people do), so it was a brief ‘conversation’ which ended with me walking away.

The guards stand for two hours at a time, and have a security
official whose job is to wipe sweat from their foreheads

The Presidential Palace is near Independence Square

What didn’t we see? Budget accommodation – I had to stay in an $82-a-night hotel for two nights as other options such as AirBnB and Couchsurfing are in effect banned. People, aside from in a market on the edge of town and on local buses. Cars to fill the five-lane highways. A variety of foodstuffs in the supermarket next to the hotel. Artwork, aside from in some space-age bus stops.

Neutrality Avenue has a distinct lack of motor vehciles

The bazaar was covered and modernised by the government in 2010, and once again
seems too big for purpose, as you can see from the empty spaces

Some buildings are beginning to break the architectural monotony, which makes Ashgabat a more interesting vision. There are also some unique sights, such as the largest hand-woven carpet in the world. However, it more often seems like a city-building computer game where the leader has unlocked an unlimited money cheat and started building grand and odd structures with no regard for planning.

The Ministry of Health is shaped like a cobra

The carpet is 14 x 21 metres and weighs 1.2 tonnes

I’ve heard Ashgabat be compared both to Pyongyang and Las Vegas, and I can see justifications for both. Like the former, it is a heavily guarded city with hardly any people walking around large buildings. Like the latter, it is a random set of buildings in the middle of the desert and far too many water fountains for the climate.

Rather aptly, I was reading George Orwell's '1984' whilst in Ashgabat

The water bill must be enormous, though the Caspian is nearby

However, it seems pretty unique to me. Particularly as there aren’t many other people around. It has some similarities with Astana but Ashgabat seems a far less liveable and likeable place. I feel sorry for the citizens of this city who see these empty marble monoliths erected when they’re struggling on the poverty line. That’s probably the best description of Ashgabat, in addition to weird and wacky. Empty. Soulless.

Always strange to see giant posters of a country's leader holding puppies

The roughly cut wigs in the main bazaar were very funny

Very, very white

Love you all,

Matt