Turkmenistan I

The Turkmen border officials, however, were very thorough…. Pretty well organized I had to have a transit route for 5 days specified, vehicle registration, insurance and diesel tax were calculated and I was rid of a 167 US. The diesel tax is 10 cent per kilometer of the estimated travel distance. With a basic diesel price of 20 cent US /l that is still pretty fair… Nothing beats Iran though with 5 to 10 cents per liter diesel. The bad part though was the search of the truck, all boxes out and a look into every corner, well almost…;-) They did pick on Joe’s farewell present, a Shisha … They are illegal in Turkmenistan and no negotiating could change its fate…I had to destroy it in front of their eyes… sorry Joe, I did not even use it once …:-(… the guys were very apologetic but insisting….

I had now a 5 day transit visa, which allowed me to roam around freely along the specified route without the mandatory guide for tourists…

The descent towards Ashgabat revealed why its called the city of marble… It was actually very eerie…completely empty brand new roads, everything perfectly clean, sterile new, perfectly white office buildings and monuments… The few cars on the road were generally recent, high-end models and all spanking clean!.....I was on a different planet compared with Iran…

Obviously I entered directly into the government and economic district and it was a Sunday but a big culture shock nevertheless. Exploring on foot was another experience…at least on every corner a policemen who eyes you, ….sometimes not allowing me to enter a road for no visible reason directing me a different way. Everything seemed extremely orderly and reglemented, each corner had its own cleaning lady that was constantly brushing away… I was a bit paranoid of taking any pictures hearing all sort of horror stories beforehand so its just my words… After I was whisked off the road by some plain clothes officials, caricatures of the secret service…black suit, big bulges under the shoulders, sun glasses….( I assume some official was passing) I chose to leave that district and ended up in the Russian market, which actually was quite refreshing J. No no not the vodka and beer…J .

The famous arc of Neutrality with the monstrous statue of the former ruler, however, was nowhere to be found although my maps were correct… I was told the new ruler had taken it down and is rebuilding it outside the city… That could mean 2 things…either the system becomes more open and less megalomanic or he is building an even bigger monument of himself…remains to be seen… ;-)

My parking spot in the center was actually perfect, well guarded by all these policemen around and they did not seem to mind me staying there so I had a very protected sleep. The night saw some rain with a very welcome temperature drop of at least 10 degrees. My clean truck looked pretty bad after 20 minutes on the road towards the North the next morning though….but outside of Ashgabat nobody cares …