I’ve arrived back in Ashgabat around 1 am from my trip to the door to hell.  This is of course the last day on my visa, so I’ve got until 5 pm today to make the border – after that it’s closed for the night.  With this in mind, and the fact that I had …

Now this was one I’d been looking forward to for a long time.  You’ll have all seen it before – it’s one of those tourist oddities that crops up in lists of strange places you won’t believe are on this planet.  Or things to see before you die.  Or Sovietfuckups dot com.  Not sure that’s …

Oh where to begin?!  Ashgabat is just crying out for a lampooning by an eloquent, witty wordsmith with biting prose and scathing humour – but unfortunately I’ll have to do.  Let’s all follow the impeccable brick road shall we?  The insanity starts when you ease into the city from the border checkpoints, on tarmac that looks …

I had finally scored my visas.  There was nothing keeping me in Iran. Well, nothing I’d write about just now anyway, and the time was drawing nigh to depart.  Visas are date specific, so I needed to enter Turkmenistan on the 27th of November and cross is within 5 days.  So at the time of …