We landed at Ashgabat International Airport around 2:30am. We were some of the first passengers to disembark, to be front of line for immigration. There were plenty of officials at this early hour to direct us through the multiple steps to enter Turkmenistan. First, we lined up at the visa counter to get our visa (a couple months ago we received a Letter of Invitation from a local travel agency we contacted which allowed us to travel to Turkmenistan). We got a nice full page sticker for our visa! Next, we took our paperwork to the cashier and paid the visa and processing fees (99 USD each for Canadians). Back to the visa counter again to show proof of payment and get our passports back. Then, through immigration, which was an self-serve fingerprint, photo and passport scan (similar to Toronto, but much easier to use). After, we lined up to get an entry stamp.
Waited for our baggage at the carousel. My pack came out quickly; Heather’s came later and on a different conveyor (Heather: triggering some panicked memories of my pre-Eric days with lost luggage). We didn’t have any manat (Turkmen currency) for the luggage cart, so I just carried our bags.
At customs, they just waved tourists through a cursory luggage scan (locals mostly had their suitcases opened and inspected).
Finally we made it into Turkmenistan! A lot of steps to get here, but the whole process to enter only took about 45 minutes. The officials were very pleasant and welcoming throughout.
Our tour guide was waiting for us with both our names on a sign. Similar to Bhutan, you have a driver and guide with you for the entire visit. You have to prearrange a day-by-day itinerary to apply for the LOI (Letter of Invitation). There are ways to get around this with a transit visa, but the transit visa decline rate for Turkmenistan is over 50%, at least according to the internet.
The airport is 6km from the city centre of Ashgabat, so it didn’t take long to drive over to the Grand Turkmen Hotel. We drove by building after building clad in white marble (all government buildings in Ashgabat are required to have white marble exteriors; other buildings must be white; and all cars have to be white or a light grey).
There was a full contingent of staff all awake at 3:30am to check us in. The whole process was very Soviet-like. We half expected the room to be bugged.
Our room was functional, including a balcony with a view of the centre. I took some pics and then later realized they were government buildings; picture-taking of these is frowned upon here. So, uploaded them to google photos and deleted from my SD card (the wifi was pretty good).
Breakfast was until 10am and our guide was picking us up at 1pm to start our excursion, so we figured on about five hours of sleep to catch the end of breakfast.
At 8am, however, the phone rang. It was the front desk reminding us of the breakfast hours (?) We were almost asleep again when there was a knock at the door. It was our guide with the manat (local currency) that he exchanged for us at the black market rate of about 10-1 (three times better than the official rate).
By now we had given up on trying to sleep, so went down for breakfast. It was more of a typical local breakfast. We had the crepes with a preserved jam (apricot, I think), some orange slices, and a tea. There was also some dry semi-firm cheese and squash, which I served hoping it might be papaya. I put that up to lack of sleep since there are no papaya trees here!
After, we went back up to our room and showered and got ourselves together. Tried to take a nap and were (again) woken by the front desk calling to find out what time we were checking out. It was getting kind of comical at this point.
So, we decided to pack up and go down to the lobby around 12:30. There were a couple of small gift shops that Heather browsed. The hotel room was included in our itinerary, so we only had to pay a tourist tax of 2 USD per person per day.
Our guide met us at the hotel and returned our passports. He had taken them to register us with the police, for which we got an official looking paper with our itinerary mapped out. We were never asked for them the rest of the trip, but our papers would have been in order.
We first stopped for lunch in town at a busy pilaf (called plov) restaurant. They made rice in giant pots about 4’ in diameter and 3’ deep. We had a meat plov (similar to Spanish, meat means beef), which was excellent.
Then we were on the road, headed three hours north to the Darvaza Gas Crater, and the main reason why I wanted to vist Turkmenistan. The road to the crater was in pretty good shape, with our driver reaching 130km in places. The landscape changed to desert as we climbed out of the valley and into the Karakum desert (which covers over 70 percent of Turkmenistan).
We reached a road that turned off the main road and went right on a dirt road for about 5km, and then we were at the crater! It wasn’t as spectacular during the day.
The driver dropped us off and drove a couple hundred metres away to set up camp and start on dinner.
We walked around the gas crater and took lots of pics. It’s natural gas, so there was no smell, but it does get very hot when the draft blows into your face.
Walked over to our camp and watched the dinner preparations. There were lamb skewers over coals and grilled vegetables (for us) and a pot of beef stew. For another group arriving later, they placed four legs of lamb and some lamb rack of ribs directly on a hot bed of coals and then covered with a lid and let sit for two hours.
We had way too much food for dinner. I focused on the lamb, which was some of the best I’ve had. The sun was going down and we started to see the red glow of the flames on the side of the crater.
We finished dinner and then walked back to the crater to get our sunset pics. The site was more popular than I expected - there were over 40 tourists on this night, mostly on group tours. There was one other independent traveler, Judy, who travelled extensively in the region and offered us some advice on the Uzbekistan part of our trip, which she had just completed.
We called it a night around 9pm and went to bed in our tent. The overnight low was about 15C, but we were toasty warm in our sleeping bags.
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