Thursday 9th May, 2019 – Ashgabat
Got to the border at Bajgiran just before 9am. Iranian side quite straightforward, one of the officials at the gate even asked for a selfie with us and the car ! but when we got to the Turkmen side, it was another story.
We were first ushered in the passport control building where we had to wait for a lady to turn up and then pay 24 dollars. Another wait for the official to look at our passports, enter us in ledgers manually and on the computer, take fingerprints, photo and stamp our passports! Then I had to go through the customs section as a pedestrian and Paul with the car. I went through quite quickly but Paul had to go to various offices, pay 192 dollars for various fees including insurance, get a GPS tracker and sign a form agreeing to have it on at all times and return it in good condition ! ….. Then get the custom inspection of the car… by then I had been waiting on the other side of the terminal for almost 45 mn. I could see the car but the soldiers on duty would not let me near it.
The customs official came with his sniffer-dog.There were also 3 other officials circling the car. They asked to see the inside of the car and poked at a few bags. Had to open the roof box and take bags down, open other boxes on the roof and they went through the contents. Then came the dreaded question: have you got a drone? we had to admit we did, they looked at it and said it was prohibited in Turkmenistan so they sealed the box to make sure we could not use it. They still seemed to be unhappy about it but eventually they agreed we could go. In all just over 3 hours…. and the border was quiet, no other car whilst we were there, only pedestrians Turkmen returning from a shopping trip to Iran, loaded with lots of plastic bags.
There is a 20km or so ” no-man’s land ” before you cross the last checkpoint and show your passports again and your details are yet again entered in manual ledgers….
Ashgabat is a further 20km away. We had read and seen videos of the town and the description fits. Huge empty avenues lined with massive buildings clad in white marble all to the glory of the former leader (Saparmurat Niyazov ), under the pretence of reviving the great Turkmen spirit. All official buildings are guarded and off limits, no pictures allowed.
Nice on a postcard but soulless… and money would be better spent on improving the roads( as we will found out later).
Where is everone? 
Empty streets 
Ruhnama, written by
Niyazov , a must to know, equivalent to Mao’s little red book
40m tall Independence Tower, ( known as “the plunger” because of its shape) and the great man himself:
Saparmurat Niyazov .
Hotels are clearly designed for foreign tourists , decor is ostentatious and they asked ridiculous prices (USD 200+), there are a few medium range ones but rooms do not justify the USD 75 or so demanded. There is a lot of traffic police on the streets, hiding under the cover of trees and keen to stop you for speeding or just to check your papers. (This is true on open roads too and near city limits where you inevitably have to go through a police check and stop so a camera can take a picture….) We had intended to stay for one night but decided to move on. We took the road to Mary, our next stop, and camped !
Friday 10th May, 2019 – Mary and Merv
Arrived in Mary and again difficult to find somewhere to stay. It seems hotels are either top of the range or low cost for locals. We ended up in a low cost at an unbeatable price: 50 Manats (USD 2.70 at black market exchange rate), and we even had a private “bathroom” where the shower worked intermittently… but there was no sink!
Mary is the third biggest city, located in a big oasis in the middle of the Kara Kum Desert. It is a major center of cotton industry, large traffic point and the main center of gas industry .However, the main reason to come to Mary was to go and visit the archeological site of Merv about 30 km away.
There is not a great deal to see but the site is of archeological importance. Today only the Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar (died in 1157) remains and has been restored. It is a simple square shape. Originally it had a magnificent turquoise-tiled outer dome, said to be visible from a day’s ride away, but that is long gone. There are also remains of old fortified walls and a fortress.
Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar 
Saturday 11th May, 2019 – Gazadzhak and Dashoguz
We are on a transit visa and have 5 days to cross the country. (otherwise you need to be on a guided tour). The country is mainly desert so today we have 460km of the Karakum desert to look forward to!
We left early and it was interesting to see people setting off to work, waiting by the side of the road for a lift or the local “minibus”, children walking to school( young girls have a green dress and older ones a red dress etc… Women wear colourfull long dresses with elaborate embroidery at the neck. They also wear scarves with what appears to be a pre-moulded shape underneath which give it a peculiar shape ( quite square at the back of the head).
We crossed agricultural land at first and it was still quite green with sheperds taking their herds to the fields… that did not last. We soon hit the desert and the road was BAD. It had been asphalted at some point but now it was a bone rattling interminable stretch which ran in a straight line as far as you could see. We had to constantly zig zag to avoid the worst potholes or use the shoulder which created large clouds of dust. The temperature was in the low 40’s C and you were assailed by flies and insects the minute you stopped. In one place, it was butterflies ” attacking” us
We made it to Gazadzhak (north of the country) in 8 hours. We filled up with diesel and the attendant confirmed there was no accommodation in town. We were tempted to try and cross into Uzbekistan there and then (the border was only 3km away) but doubted if we would be able to do so as our visa specifically mentioned another crossing. It was almost 5pm and the crossing closed at 6pm, the next town Dashoguz was 200km away, going west ( and more or less following the border) and we hoped we could get to it before dark.
How wrong we were !
The road turned out to be even worse than the one we had been on the whole day. On top of this there were military checkpoints every 40 km or so where we had to wait around whilst they were entering our details in manual ledgers and radio-ing ahead (we supposed) advising the next post of our presence? It was getting close to sunset and this is when it turned to hell. A massive sand dune had overtaken the road. The road (now reduced to sand track) forked and we took the wrong side and soon got stuck. We spent over an hour trying to reverse out but only managed to move a car length. We were only 15m or so away from the solid road but just could not make it. It was getting dark now. A truck driver who had been parked on the road about 50m away, fixing something on his lorry all this time was about to leave but after some hesitation ( he was afraid to get stuck himself) he agreed to try and pull us out with our tow rope. It worked and was such a relief. We went on the other branch of the road this time, keeping the foot on the gas hoping the speed would help us clear this patch. It was about 600m long and we were bouncing around like crazy. We managed to get through !
It was the first of 4 such ” sand trials”, made all the more hair-raising because it was dark and we could hardly see where the track was going! At one of the checkpoints, the guard tried to cheer us up saying there were only another 40km of really bad road left and then things improved…. The road was so bad that our roof box went flying and landed on the road, thankfully without major damage ( cracks we hoped could be fixed)
We finally arrived in Dashoguz close to 11 pm and settled in a soviet style hotel which had seen better days, but was in the centre of town.
Sunday 12th May, 2019
We spent the morning” leaking our wounds”, cleaning and re-organising the inside of the truck as everything had been turned upside down and was covered in dust. We had lunch in a new and modern restaurant down the road and the owner who could speak some english went out of his way to help us find a garage that could fix the box for us. He dispatched one of the waiters to accompany us. After trying a couple of places we eventually found someone who could do it. We also had someone else reset one of the windows which had slipped out of its groove and was stuck. We were as good as new…. (almost!) and hoped we could leave this bad episode behind.
Monday 13th May -Konye-Urgench
Only 93kms away and close to the border… we could not wait to cross into Uzbekistan. Nevertheless we stopped to visit the site.
” Konye-Urgench (from Persian ‘Old Urgench’) is a rural backwater with livestock wandering its chaotic, unpaved roads. Yet centuries ago this was the centre of the Islamic world, not the end of it. Today most of Old Urgench lies underground, but there is enough urban tissue to get an idea of its former glories. Its uniqueness was acknowledged in 2005 when Unesco named it a World Heritage Site. “(Lonely Planet).
There are several Mausoleums spread over a large area and a minaret, leaning noticably. It was once attached to a mosque, it is currently 59m tall but must have been taller in the past.
Turabeg Khanym Mausoleum – 12th century 
There are 365 sections on the sparkling mosaic underside of the dome, representing the days of the year; 24 pointed arches immediately beneath the dome representing the hours of the day; 12 bigger arches below representing the months the year; and four big windows representing the weeks of the month. The cupola is unusual in early Islamic architecture and has its equal only in Shiraz, Iran.
Gutlug Timur Minaret
The Il-Arslan Mausoleum is Konye-Urgench’s oldest standing monument. The conical dome, with a curious zigzag brick pattern, is the first of its kind and was exported to Samarkand by Timur. Il-Arslan, who died in 1172, was Tekesh’s father. The conical dome with 12 faces is unique, and the collapsing floral terracotta moulding on the facade is also unusual.
Ladies posing… and Sultan Tekesh Mausoleum in the background
It was time to leave. We got to the border around 12.30pm and started the passport control process only to be told that it was lunchtime and would have to wait until 2pm We passed the time chatting to 2 of the young soldiers who were eager to practice their english. They were doing their military service (2years) and were dreaming of travelling…Once the border re-opened, we cleared passport control fairly quickly but had to go through fingerprinting and photographying again. We gladly handed back the car GPS tracker (more forms to be stamped). Customs had another good look at the car, asked if we had any carpets, antiques , guns or drugs!… and then on to the Uzbek side.
There it was straight forward, customs did inpect the car and asked questions but we we were done in less than half an hour. We were glad to be back in Uzbekistan as we have happy memories of our first trip there 8 years ago.
