The 'Stans - Darvaza to Khiva (31 July 2019)

Today was a slog. 400km from Darvaza to Khiva, via Konye-Urgench. It must have taken the best part of 10 hours and involved my first border crossing of the trip. I had read horror stories of crossing the Turkmen/Uzbek border, so braced myself for a rough day.

I woke up super early as the sun rendered all sleep impossible through the heat and brightness. I woke up feeling lucky to have spent the night in near solitude, sleeping next to something as spectacular as Darvaza. My ever present guide made breakfast and packed away my little tent.

I parted ways with the Dutch guys and wished them luck with the rest of the trip. We were both heading the same way, and would most likely bump into each other in Uzbekistan where we said we'd share a beer. However, that was the last I heard from the Dutch guys. As the Land Cruiser was heading north to Khiva, my guide received a message from the Dutch guys' guide who said their not so trusty VW van had broken down.

Turkmenistan is not the place to break down. Especially in the desert. Especially with a visa ending that very day.

We ploughed on regardless to Konye-Urgench, only stopping for toilet breaks on the way. The scenery remaining constant throughout.

Kunya-Urgench is located just south of the border of Uzbekistan and contains minarets and mausoleums from the 13th and 14th centuries. It was my first ancient Silk Road settlement - although not as spectacular as the Uzbek Silk Road, it was still inspiring and offered a chance to interact with local Turkmen.

In fact, I turned out to be a bit of a celebrity here. I don't know whether it was the above-the-knee shorts or the blonde hair, I must have posed for at least a dozen photos.

Having enjoyed my five minutes of fame, I headed back to the Land Cruiser for the final leg of the Turkmenistan journey. "Border closed". We had mis-timed the journey and had hit lunch time at the Dasoguz border - lunchtime equals no border crossing. We instead found a restaurant in the border town and I sat down to a kebab. My guide also ate, but chose to sit at a different table, very near mine. Maybe it was something I said.

We finally made it to the Uzbek border. My driver dropped me, we said our goodbyes, I exchanged my Manat to So'm. I was now on my own. Although Turkmenistan is considered a harder country to navigate, I was never alone and was treated very well. At this border my Central Asia trip felt like it was really beginning.

I walked up to the Turkmenistan border building. A large group of locals had gathered in a gaggle by the door waiting to be called in. When they saw me waiting by them, in full range of the sun, they all shouted 'tourist, tourist' and waived me to the front of the group. One even shouted at the border guard to let me in the building. In I went. I was whisked through the process and out into no man's land. Maybe Central Asia isn't as scary as people think...

At no man's land, I waited for the bus to take me to the Uzbek border. A one mile ride in a soviet era mini bus. The driver asked me where I was from and he responded with Liverpool players' names.

We stepped off the bus and into the Uzbek border control building. The building was guarded by soldiers who couldn't have been older than 18. Again, most of the soldiers spoke some English and shouted football players names at me - when in doubt, also resort to football.

I passed through the border with no hassle and no questions. I had read that the Uzbek border was notorious for harassment - for border guards reviewing every photo on your phone, searching every square inch of your belongings and declaring every medicine that was being carried. But, there was none. Just a friendly smile and a 'welcome to Uzbekistan'. Uzbekistan has recently opened up to tourists and the outside world. Visas are far easier to obtain and this border cross is now one of welcoming and happiness.

I pass through the border building and out onto the street. In life I have developed a deep-rooted distrust towards taxi drivers. One such taxi driver had been driving away from the border but double took when he was the foreigner and made a beeline for me. He already had a paying passenger but couldn't resist getting another - $10 for the 3 hour ride to Khiva. I sat up in the front, with my bag on my lap. No leg room. No air conditioning. No idea where I was going.

The Turkmen passenger spoke a bit of English, and asked me if I had a wife. When I said no, the taxi driver looked in shock. After a while it was just me and the taxi driver on the road to Khiva, sweating out in the sauna on wheels. Finally we made it to Khiva.

I was dropped at the front door of the Khiva Alibek hostel, directly outside the main gate of Khiva. I was absolutely knackered and found a comfortable spot to lie down for a while.

One fellow traveller said it was cheaper to enter Khiva after a certain time - I went to the ticket office and tried to buy a cheap tickets. She refused and said I should come back tomorrow.

Instead, I waited and watched from the vantage point of my hostel until the old town closed up for the night and the entrances were no longer guarded at around 8pm. I went for a dusk-time stroll and came across two of Khiva's famous minarets beautifully lit up.

Kalta Minor:

Islam Khodja Minaret:

At this point I called it a day and went back to the hostel for some much needed rest. Who knew sitting down in a car all day could be so exhausting.

The 'Stans - Ashgabat to Darvaza (30 July 2019)

This was the most anticipated part of the trip for me - seeing Darvaza; the 'door to hell', the 'gates of hell'. It is the sort of place that no one really knows, yet everyone has seen on one of the '5 most extreme places in the world' articles littered on travel blogs. Had Darvaza not been in Turkmenistan, I may have missed it altogether. But Darvaza was a must-see for me.

Darvaza is quite literally a hole in the middle of an extremely remote desert. Having a guide and a Land Cruiser made the journey extremely simple - something that was priceless on a short trip. I'd read about people making it near to Darvaza by bus, however, traversing the final hour on foot through the sand of the desert in 40 degree heat is no joke.

The day started with some free time in Ashgabat. In the hotel reception, my guide found someone to translate to me. We did not want to get to the desert too early, because, well it is the desert. So I was told to meet the driver back in the hotel at midday. This left me a couple of hours to buy some fruit and stroll around the area near the hotel. I settled on pizza for lunch and made the most of the black market exchange rates.

At midday I met my guide and we drove to a shopping mall to pick up supplies for the overnight stay at Darvaza. The guide dropped me and told me he would be back in around 2 hours. Before heading to the mall, I walked to the exit and had a walk around Ashgabat, down to the site of the stadia built for the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, completed in 2017 and costing close to $5 billion.

Again the streets were empty and I could find no way into the stadium grounds. It looked as though it had not been used since the games in 2017. Suffering from near heat stroke, I walked back to the mall via an underpass and saw my first glimpse of the 'non-manicured' Turkmenistan. 3 or 4 Turkmen people sleeping and what looked like living in the underpass.

After an hour or so, I was back at the mall which happened to be the busiest place in Turkmenistan. Full of the young Turkmen hanging about; eating, shopping and drinking.

I located my guide and we did a supermarket dash of water, meat (lamb and chicken), vegetables, sweets, coca cola - the lot. We saved the best until last. A bottle of Turkmen vodka to cheers our arrival at Darvaza.

With the shopping packed, we started out 266km journey to the crater.

As we headed further outside of Ashgabat, we started to see the real Turkmenistan. Away from the white marble cladding, Turkmenistan is an impoverished nation with all the gas funds being filtered into vanity projects for the President - think the airport shaped like an eagle and the gold statue of Niyazov.

The road started out as a smooth Ashgabat highway and slowly degraded with every passing kilometre, until finally we were surrounded by sand.

From this:

 To this:

On the way we stopped at two other crater in the vicinity. Both craters were nothing but a tepid warm up act for crater number 3 - Darvaza. The crater itself is the consequence of an ill-judged Soviet attempt to dig for gas. In 1971, the drilling rig collapsed into a 70m crater. To avoid the gas releasing into the air, it was set alight and continued burning until present.

At a non-descript turning, the land cruiser hit a hard right and left what little road we had been driving on. Now we were off-road, tearing over sand dunes and heading further into the distance. After about 20 minutes, we start to see some signs of civilisation. A handful of huts dotted in the distance, at which point we got our first glimpse of the crater, and my word is it spectacular.

In the light of day, one can see a vast expanse just open up in the middle of the desert, right before your eyes. What is truly remarkable is how untouched the area is - just a few huts in site. No town, no shops, no hawkers - just the crater.

I meandered up a hill to get a better view of the crater and just sat and watched. After a while a group of four Dutch men followed the route I had taken and we started to talk. These guys were doing the Mongol Rally in a VW people carried come van. We exchanged routes and our different expectations of Turkmenistan, and then headed back down the hill to our respective guides. The Dutch guy said I was brave to be tackling Central Asia on my own More to come on the Dutch guys later...

Once I locate my guide, I sit down to a freshly prepared meal that he has been slaving over for the past hour, with a full table setting:

It turns out the Dutch guys were camping in the same enclosure as me. They did not receive the same hospitality that my guide had given me, and looked enviously on. After finish my chicken, I cracked open the vodka and offered it around to the Dutch guys in exchange for some warm beer. We sat around the camp, listening to techno and drinking until sunset, which is when Darvaza became magical.

At this point we decided to relocate around the campfire. We carried five chairs, beers and the subwoofer - still blaring out techno. We all sat at the edge of the crater, staring in awe as spectacular show in front of us.

At one point a group of tourists arrived to view the crater, they must have been passing by as they only stayed to complete a lap of the crater. One of them told us that we had ruined their experience with our drinking and techno.

When we had our crater back to ourselves, the Dutch guys produced gas canisters. They were inquisitive as to what would happen if dropped into the crater. So of course, into the crater they go.

I was expecting a large boom and singed eyebrows, but it turned out to be underwhelming. Just a quiet popping. We had ran out of beers and somehow, a man on a bike had turned up offering to get us beers for an extortionate price. With hindsight, not that extortionate consider we were in the middle of nowhere. 

At this point we called it a night and attempted to walk in a straight line back to our camp. This is a lot easier said than done, considering we were in a pitch black desert with no light sources. We struggled back in zig zags and somehow found our camp.

As I went to bed, I stared up at the sky and saw the most beautiful night sky I had ever seen. Every star was clear and seemed within reach.

I jumped into my tiny one man tent, while the Dutch Guys decided to sleep al fresco on a large mat.