Reflections on Central Asia and Istanbul – Part 1

Darvaza Gas Crater – Turkmenistan

It has been almost a week since we returned from our most recent adventure and I am disappointed I was unable to document the experiences as they were happening. The constant traveling—mostly by car— and the lack of Internet access prevented me from updating the blog. One post the entire trip—pathetic!  I will still try to piece together some thoughts, experiences and a few pictures before they become hazy memories.

As I mentioned in a previous post, this is as far east as I have traveled and, including a brief 6 hour visit to Istanbul on the front end of the trip, we spent almost two days getting from the US to our final destination in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Needless to say, our first full day wasn’t hitting the ground running…rather it was hitting the (very hard) bed sleeping…for almost 8 hours. Tashkent is a relatively new and uninspiring Soviet era influenced city. We arrived at our hotel around 7 in the morning, exchanged money with the help of our cab driver (at the black market rate in what felt like some sort of clandestine hotel room drug deal) and slept until midafternoon. Finally managed to leave the hotel room, walked around a bit, had a meat platter for dinner (not sure what kind and really didn’t care to know) and beers at a local restaurant in a nearby park. Had another meat patty thing at a local market on the walk back to the hotel and then called it a night. We had a scheduled flight to Khiva at 7AM the next morning.

The next morning, the driver picked us up and dropped us off at the Tashkent domestic terminal. After milling around the airport for several minutes trying to figure out where to get our tickets, I heard someone with a heavy foreign accent yelling my name. It was our driver trying to get our attention to let us know that Derek left his phone in the car. First crisis averted.

Khiva turned out to be one of the high points of the trip. We stayed in a nice place called the Meros and the staff were kind enough to make us breakfast since we didn’t have any at the Tashkent hotel. We met our guide, Anna, almost immediately and ventured out for a full day of sightseeing. I will admit that after several hours one site became almost undistinguishable from another as we visited about twenty madrassas…many looking very much the same. A recurring odd and humorous experience the entire day was the local young people that asked to have our photos taken with them…our brief time as local rock stars. I assume that they don’t get very many western folks visiting. The other tourists that we did see were mostly in their 60’s and 70’s and I am still trying to figure out what that means about us and our choice to visit this chunk of the world.

At dinner we met a woman from Baltimore who was eating alone. Anna invited her to sit at our table after dinner and we sat and listened to her crazy stories and a plethora of likely embellished past experiences. She told us she was a Harvard zoology grad, former chemical weapons expert and now Central Asian cookbook writer. I couldn’t tell which stories were true but she certainly enjoyed talking about herself. I made the mistake of asking about her journey from Harvard zoology to writing cookbooks. A 30 minute diatribe ensued that seemingly detailed every job she ever had. We walked her back to her hotel and called it a night.

The next morning was our drive to the Turkmenistan border and we immediately received bad news that our driver’s car had mechanical issues and that he arranged to have his son drive us (I think it was his son—it was explained to us very quickly and I didn’t catch the entire story). We loaded into a beat up car, found out quickly that the young kid didn’t speak a word of English and started on our planned 90 minute drive to the border. The drive actually took 40 minutes as our young driver sped along at a consistent 140kph over the worst road I have ever seen (until I got to Turkmenistan, that is…more on that later).

We made it through Uzbek customs with minimal discomfort and had to wait at the border gates for 10 minutes until the Turkmen authorities unlocked the gates on the other side. We encountered a little more hassle on the Turkmen side but were happy to see our guide Dmitri waiting there to help us sort through the visa process as all of the forms were in Russian. Without Dmitri’s assistance, I think our chances of getting the visas were slim. We showed our paperwork and paid the $140 for both visas and then had to sit waiting for about an hour while they made sure everything was legit…Dmitri had to step in a couple of times to help the process along. We then jumped into his Nissan “Jeep” (every four wheel drive was called a Jeep regardless of manufacturer) and headed first to Konye-Urgench where we visited several historical sites before heading on the road through the Karakum desert to Ashgabat with an overnight stop in the desert to visit the Darvaza gas craters. The first 40 miles or so were traversed over the worst road I have ever experienced (about 100 times worse than the Uzbek road to the border). The entire time my hands were clenched around my seat as we dodged potholes the size of small cars and huge bumps in the road that I am guessing we’re caused by the high desert temperatures…it was a cool 95 degrees this particular day. I am not kidding about the roads…Dmitri jerked his jeep left and right every few seconds to avoid potholes that would have been mechanically catastrophic. It was one of the most impressive displays of driving concentration I have seen.

After 50 miles the road got slightly better….we weren’t dodging potholes every few seconds…now we were dodging them every 10 seconds. We stopped for some take-away food before we entered the desert to see the crater. I had to go to the bathroom badly as the rough ride had created some severe intestinal discomfort. I was directed to a badly decomposing wooden box the size of a phone booth about 25 meters away from where we parked. The door was propped open with a metal bar and as soon as I entered hundreds of flies flew out of a roughly cut hole on of the wooden bottom of the structure. My first impulse was to turn around and try to hold it until we found more suitable accommodations… however that likelihood was remote. I put myself in a Zen state of mind, got into a catcher’s position and did my business as best as possible… it needed to be done and my demeanor was greatly improved afterwards.

In the distance…my only bathroom option

The total drive from the border to the gas crater was about 4 hours or so. Dmitri, without warning, veered his jeep left into the desert sand. There are no road signs to the gas craters…you need a local to lead the way. After a 2 mile trip into the desert we reached the crater while it was still daylight. You could hear it before you saw it…sounding like thousands of full-on gas grills. The sight of it in the daytime was impressive but the evening and early morning views were fantastic. Dmitri provided two tents and we quickly set them up and ate our take-out food shortly afterwards.  The rest of the late afternoon we spent near the gas crater.  We ended the evening drinking several shots of vodka around a small table we setup earlier while fending off giant desert ants and beetles and the occasional spider and scorpion.  I woke at dawn and went on a solo walk down to the crater. It was cool in the desert and the occasional blast of heat from the crater felt great. I took about 25 photos and waited for Derek and Dmitri to wake. We had a disgusting breakfast of bread that tasted like motor oil (I assume stored in Dmtri’s jeep for days), an orange looking paste from a tin can that we were told was chicken liver and some cheese and black tea. The utensils he brought to the table as well as their containers were filthy. Every fork and knife had dried insects attached. I had a piece of cheese, a little bread and jam and a cup of tea and that was all I could take.

We packed up the tents and headed for Ashgabat visiting two smaller craters on our way. We also visited a traditional desert town…Erbent, I think, which had to be experienced to be believed. Back into the car for the remaining 200 mile drive to Ashgabat.

We arrived at the Aziya hotel in Ashgabat and quickly realized that it was a bit far from the city center and also discovered that it is much more difficult to get around and interact as there is very little English spoken. Still, we managed to find a cab to one of the local shopping areas where we were able to exchange money. We walked across the street to a restaurant where we were immediately surprised by the blaring club music and disco lighting…is this really Turkmenistan? We ordered dinner from a mostly expressionless Russian girl and watched several locals leave their tables mid-dinner and start dancing on the small dance floor in the middle of the restaurant whenever they heard a song they liked. I had a chicken kebab that was OK but nothing spectacular and a $10 beer…I am still trying to find out why alcohol costs so much here. Still it was a funny experience made even more so by the realization that the Iranian border is only a few miles away… the ultimate “dry” country. The $10 beer didn’t seem so bad at that point.

We stopped again at the supermarket and bought a few things to take back to the hotel and hailed a cab…which seemed to be anyone that wanted to drive folks around for money…no yellow cars or meters. We negotiated a cab ride that should have cost 3 Manat into a 10 Manat ride…can you say tourist rip off? Clearly our ability to negotiate at this point of the trip is severely lacking…unfortunately, this wouldn’t be the first time. We got back to the hotel at 1:16AM and crashed.