Tandem to Turkmenistan Part 3 - Across the Karakum Desert

Cass writes…

Incongruous in the vast bowl of the Karakum Desert, shadowed by the dusty Kopet Dag mountains, Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat, is perhaps the most peculiar city I have visited on my travels. It's a city synonymous with the country's egocentric leader, Saparmurat Niyazov, aka 'Turkmenbashi', Head of All Turkmen. Complimenting his magnanimous title, an equally modest slogan is emblazoned on every wall and billboard across town: Halk, Watan, Turkmenbashi! People, Nation, Me!

Crossing the border from Iran, a sinewy descent from a mountain pass deposits us on the outskirts of the city. Passing a kilometre of extravagant fountains, one would hardly believe we have reached the fringes of the Karakum, one of the hottest, bleakest deserts on Earth. Usurping podiums once home to Lenin, enormous placards of Turkmenbashi adorn every building in an array of poses; clutching a bouquet of flowers, assuming a look of concern, smiling benignly. In the centre of town, a golden statue twelve metres high resides on top of the capital's own Tour Eiffel, the Tower of Neutrality. Like a surreal jewelbox ballerina, rotating with the sun on a motorised platform, arms outstretched, Turkmenbashi hails the sunrise and bids farewell to the sunset.

Our first night is spent in an old colonial style hotel, the Oktyabrskaya. It's a basic room lost down a long, noisy corridor where faces peer surreptitiously from doorways. By day, we wander this spotless city of soulless boulevards, immaculately manicured and lush with a myriad of fountains, firing jets of water that sparkle in the midday sun. Glittering with mirrored glass and intricate domes, palatial government buildings in a fusion of Islamic and Roman styles catch the eye. An army of gardeners tend shrubs, polish statues and sweep roads, a world apart from the chaos and confusion of Iran.

Changes in Turkmenistan have been widespread in the ten years since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Russian and its Cyrillic script has been abolished and streets renamed, while Turkmenistan's national language and traditions have been reintroduced and cultivated. As visitors brought up with our own western mind-set, there's a fascination in witnessing the fall of communism, epitomised by Ashgabat's crumbling modernist apartment blocks and disused Circus,sculpted like a flying saucer and emptied of life. Aside from its cultural evils, healthcare and schooling standards have plummeted since the break-up of the Union and in this climate of nationalism, the hardships faced by the remaining Russian population are evident. It's easy to see the appeal of this nationalistic stance adopted by the government. Subdued mercilessly in the late nineteenth at the battle of Geok-Tepe by the Russians, then ravaged by Stalin's cartographic reinvention of Central Asia after the Bolshevik Revolution, it's aimed directly at the proud nomadic clans of the Turkmen people. Unanimously re-elected into office, perhaps the plethora of Turkmenbashi images have succeeded in sending out their subliminal messages; in any case, opposition parties are banned and voting is rigged. But to the outsider least, this quest for a newer, purer Turkmenistan is losing its way in Turkmenbashi's own eccentricities.

With only a ten day visa, we press on across the south eastern Karakum, Desert of the Black Sands, towards Uzbekistan. Following a highway that traces the Silk Road, cracked and broken like an old scroll, the sun burns brightly overhead. A tumultuous headwind, bane of cyclists, blusters towards us, swirling dust into our eyes. Lost in the blur of heat, our surroundings are marked by hardy shrubs, gnarled trees and ramshackle train stop towns, weather-beaten and half engulfed by sand dunes creeping forward like an relentless tide. Reaching the city of Merv, once queen of the ancient world, we look out upon an eery sandscape sprinkled with wind-eroded archways and mausoleums. Barely discernable on the muted horizon, we ponder the desolate remains of this once thriving metropolis of two million people, vanishing silently into the distance as we ride on. Resting in roadside 'chaikhanas', typical tea houses, we chew on 'shashlik', skewers of kebab mutton chequered with succulent fat.

Our thirst is quenched with 'gazly su', shots of carbonated rusty water sweetened with a squeeze of syrup. Our lips are chapped and our throats as parched as the desert around us, despite the copious litres of water we greedily consume. As dusk falls and the sky is saturated with stars, we listen to the clatter of old trains, shunting cargo through the night on the Trans Caspian Railway. It's a gruelling few days; past lone camels, forlorn bus stops and discarded Russian trucks, bonnets gaping open in abandoned surgery. Emerging finally into the industrial sprawl of Turkmenabat, a haze of chimneys and decrepit Soviet-era factories rise above the dusty veil of the desert. Slowed to a pitiful crawl in the face of such unrelenting headwind, our potholed road, melting like marzipan in the midday sun,culminates in a score of checkpoints manned by disinterested pot-bellied guards. It's been the hardest stretch of our journey to date; we've only just made it to the border in time. The tandem is a great icebreaker and formalities pass smoothly, our bags subjected to the most cursory of inspections in exchange for a test ride around the compound.

After several hundred kilometres in this fifty degree furnace of the Karakum, buffeted by its sandblaster-style wind, we inspect ourselves in the distorted bathroom mirror of our hotel. Sand has permeated our every pore, gritted in teeth and buried in ear holes, gathered in the folds of our clothes and swept into our pockets, in memory of this desert crossing. Sadly, our ten days visit to Turkmenistan is over. After our surreal stay in Ashgabat, crossing the fringes of the Karakum Desert has given us a taste of what this country is really about.