Four Points by Sheraton Ak Altin Plaza Ashgabat

... President" look down on us everywhere.

We checked into our hotel and gratefully stepped into its air conditioned interior. It was almost 50 Deg outside and Tim & Pete were ready to drop. Oleg whisked Baz off to the new showcase hospital (everything here is "showcase"!) to sort his leg whilst the rest of us cooled down. Baz soon returned with his led stitched-up and we were all relieved to hear there was no ...

... another huge and deliciouse dinner. It was wonderful! They're hospitality didn't even stop there; in the morning they drove me to the next town, bought me a new lock for my bag (mine had broken the night before) and paid for my shared taxi to Qazvin, 2 hours away. And this is after giving me more food than I could ever manage to eat for the journey (I'm still eating it now and it was 4 days ago) 2 dvds ...

... our transport arrived. A huge 4x4 bus - I kid you not with 3 blokes who had accepted the mission of taking us to the infamous gas craters. Its getting dark the bus has never made this 6km journey before and every sand dune looks pretty much like the last. This truck is fantastic - but then it is from Turkmenistan -(am I overdoing this - I brown nose so irregularly I don't know when to stop!) and the guy driving it is having fun putting it into 4 wheel drive whilst ...

... up the anchor, and have docked at 5 PM, for a transit time of 19.5 hours, which we think is pretty good, as we've heard lots of stories of people being stuck on the boat for three days waiting to dock. Surrender our keys, get our passport backs, after a full team from the ship, including one poor girl just about in tears, finally convinced Jerri to hand in her key before getting the passport back. Upstairs to Medical ...

... niedergebaggert). Hier gibt es wenigstens mal etwas leben... Ashgabat hat auch zwei Internetcafes, in jedem stehen 5 Computer, die man nach Abgabe seines Passes benutzen darf (durchschnittliche Wartezeit bis man drankommt: 30min). Am ersten Tag hatte ich ja Zugriff auf mail.yahoo aber am zweiten nicht mehr... (Das Internet wird kontrolliert, die Cafes haben daher nur zu den Arbeitszeiten des Innenministeriums geoeffnet). Gruss Ralf

Salam, von Ashgabat aus habe ich noch einen Ausflug nach Nissa unternommen, welches nur 15km entfernt liegt (das Taxi kostet immerhin US$3 dorthin...), direkt am Fusse der Berge (welche die Grenze zu Iran bilden). Nissa war die Hauptstadt des Parther Reiches seit dem 3 Jahrhundert vor Christus. Das Reich der Parther reichte vor 2000 Jahren bis ans Mittelmeer und lieferte sich mit Rom einige Kriege. Die ...

... China and India). I had a guided tour of the Royal Palace of the settlement. A lot more are yet to be excavated. In fact, I'm now confused about the various names used: Mary, Merv, Margiana, Margush, Murgab.... The settlement was vacated because Murgab River changed its course, depriving the settlement of valuable water source. West Nokhur is a mountain community west of the capital. The Nokhuri claim to be the descendants of Alexander the Great's army. We stayed with ...

... hideous Soviet architecture has been replaced with equally hideous (and quickly-decaying) modern, Turkmenbashi-inspired (or planned) monoliths. Almost everything is of white marble (with the odd stain or a few pieces cracking off here and there, just to remind you that this was indeed part of the Soviet Union once), and most structures feature a golden bust or statue of Niyazov himself. It's hard to say if the revolving statue (always ...

... in old soviet times. Upon independence from USSR (which Turkmenistan didn't want by the way) Niyazov simply changed the name of his party to the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan and made himself President, creating a personality cult in a similar fashion to the Kim Dynasty in North Korea. He took the name of Turkmenbashi ...

... called Wheelchairs and Training for the Sports Club for the Disabled, the one with Erin McNally's name next to it. - Type in the amount that you want to donate, and then the site will ask you to enter your name and credit card information. Thank you so much. If you have any questions, please e-mail me and I'll get back to you. Again, any help you could give towards making this happen would be greatly appreciated.