Golden Age (Altyn Asyr) Finished, Soviet Era Started

Those poetic words were spoken (pa russki) by my driver on our way north. At about the halfway mark between Ashgabat and the border with Uzbekistan, just barely inside the Daşgouz province, the roads went from paved asphalt to gravel marked by potholes. Or maybe it was mostly potholes with some road in between. I'm actually writing for that same road, 4.5 hours after we left our campsite this morning. And it's been an exciting drive. For starters, we realized at the first (not so serious checkpoint) that my passport was still in the hotel reception, which I left 24 hours ago. Why the hotel didn't give me back my passport remains a mystery (I thought they gave it to my guide). I returned my key, got my bill, but not my passport. So naturally panic struck us all because we were entering a border zone (still a good 2 hours away) and such documents were required and checkpoints still exist in these regions. I have never been so happy to have a satellite phone (thanks Jason) as I am now. We quickly called the hotel and confirmed that it was still at the reception and then called the travel agency to have them fly it up north. Amazingly, my passport will make it Daşgouz city before me. And I left yesterday. It's only a 50 minute flight. Makes me think I should have returned to Ashgabat after visiting the desert via the nice road and flown up north. But then I wouldn't have experienced all the wonders of the Kara Kum desert.

I've been thinking about the deteriorating roads the further you get from Ashgabat. My driver's comment was spot-on. The Altyn Asyr only extends as far as ministers' cars drive, and evidently not here. And here's a shout-out to my Failed States Peeps: diminishing sovereignity. Did I misspell that correctly? This region is the poorest of the five states here and their prime income is smuggling state-subsidized products over the Oxus and into Uzbekistan. It stands to be reasonable profitable. We filled up this Toyota SUV with just over 113L for 45,284 Manats or a rate of 1.6 cents/Liter. Pretty cheap. Take that Sovereignity.

When we were approaching the second checkpoint my driver and guide were seriously considering hiding me beneath all our camping gear in the back of the SUV. I was all for the plan, but when they realized that I have a driver's license (ahem, national identity card to the border guards) we realized that I should be ok at least until the 3 rd checkpoint and the border. I'll let you know if that plan materializes. I think it could be fun. (N.B. It was fine; we got past all checkpoints with out smuggling Dinabashi through).

So what have I been up to besides leaving my passport behind? I spent yesterday morning (Tuesday) roaming around the southern suburb of Ashgabat, Berzengi. There is a giant golden statue of your friend and mine, Saparmurat Niyazov aka Turkmenbashi. It's in Independence Park, which also has a pretty large monument and about 20 statues of Turkmen national heroes. Some of them were pretty scary. Kind of reminded me of what I image the white witch's palace to have looked like in Narnia. Only these dudes looked seriously scary. They do not look like fauns.

Then yesterday afternoon I left with guide and driver to head into the Kara Kum (Black Sands) desert, which forms the heart of Turkmenistan. Our first stop was Erbent, a semi-nomadic village comprised of some yurts (but pretty permanent ones) and some concrete structures. Why semi-nomadic? Remember how I wrote earlier about the fierce Turcomen warriors? They were nomads. In Central Asia there has always been tension between the oasis villagers/city dwellers and the nomadic warrior tribes. Inevitably the warriors conquer the villages and oasis towns because the inhabitants have forgotten how to fight. These warriors become sedentary and in turn are conquered. And so the cycle continues. So why is this important? Well the Soviet destroyed a good deal of the traditional nomadic life and what was not destroyed by them has been uprooted by Niyazov. As part of his nation building efforts he is trying to recreate the Turkmen national myth as one of urbanized city dwellers. This is not entirely false, after all I have visited ancient cities like Merv and I'm heading to Konye Urgench, but that has traditionally been the minority. The tribes were much better known for kidnapping slavs than city-dwelling. Anyhow, it seems that in the 21st century the age-old conflict between nomadic and sedentary lifestyles still goes on. Some things in Central Asia don't change. So this type of semi-nomadic life is all that's left. And it was pretty dreary. I visited a yurt in Erbent and met an entire extended family, which was a nice part to the visit. They offered me camel's milk. I declined.

After Erbent, we continued on to look at three giant gas craters. These are massive (40m wide?) craters some formed naturally, others by geological experts or gas companies. The first we visited had water at the bottom, but the water was bubbling from the gas coming up from the ground. The second crater was a mud crater; it looked like a giant mud bath with enormous bubbles. The third crater, know as the burning gas crater in Darvaza, was a burning gas crater. It was the largest…and certainly the hottest. It burns 24 hours a day and there are lots of mini fires up and down the crater walls with two giant fires in the middle. I took lots of pictures. And while it looked cool in the day, I camped there overnight and it was awesome. The following morning (i.e. this morning as I write) it was super cold and windy and I was woken up by the rain! How crazy! Oddly enough, it rained all day Wednesday in the desert, maybe the mud is why they call it the black desert, because the sand looked goldish before the rain.

(ok, I'm writing this part on Thursday): Yesterday, as I mentioned above, we drove 6 awful hours to reach Konye Urgench (old Urgench), which was a settlement along the Amu Darya (Oxus) when the river poured into the Caspian Sea (today it "flows" to the Aral Sea). There were some magnificent mausoleums and a great tower, but instead of giving it the proper attention it deserved, we left quickly to pick up my passport.

There are few things I forgot to note about Turkmenistan in some of my other posts. Ashgabat (and the other places I saw) were all pristine. The people are always immaculately dressed. After purchasing Rukhnama, Turkmenbashi's book, I realize that a lot of the things I see are because of Turkmenbashi and this book. It tells you how to live and the people follow. Also, because many of you have asked, Turkmenbashi actually died a few months back, but his spirit lives on in the country. I never saw a picture of his successor or heard his name mentioned. The country is still very much focused on Niyazov…as are the billboards, statues, slogans.

Other important things: My Turkmenbashi "gold" pocket watch keeps time well.

And for a new section of the blog: "What thing Dina brought that wasn't really necessary this week."
1) Toilet Seat Covers. Rule #1 of the stans: If there's a toilet, it's clean. If there's no toilet, then seat covers are purposeless.

I also finished "Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream for an Empire in Central Asia " by Peter Hopkirk about Central Asia post Bolshevik Revolution. It was good, but not as good as the Great Game. I'm now in the middle of "Chasing the Sea" by Tom Bissel. It's about the shrinking Aral Sea and a general travelogue of his time in Uzbekistan.

I'm sure that I'm forgetting things I intended to write, but I'll post them later if that's the case.