Hotel Gara Altyn Ashgabat

... of a fracture or any infection despite my dodgy first aid!

We stayed in Ashgabat for two nights and hoped to have a wander round to gawk at this weird city but the fierce heat remained close to 50 deg and kept us confined for the most part. Anyway, we were all focusing on the journey ahead, the heat of the desert and the uncertainty of the ferry from Turkmenbasy to Baku.

Thats all folks!

Cheers, Rick

... beutiful scarf and refusing to take a penny! This is how I will remember Iranians, for there incomparrable hospitality!
But sady time is money so I must go, I have to mention though that me and Darek (my current travelling companion) bought 3 sleeper train tickets each and the total price was 30manat, $11, for 6 overnight tickets!
I will update from Uzbekistan, I cross the border on the 3rd.

... uphill - smell of clutch burning. Anyway we saw the glow of the crater way before we got there. It was a truely amazing site. Its huge and there are 2 very good reasons not to get too close to the edge 1 is that the sides of the crater are less thsn safe and they occasionally land slide but reason number 2 is that it is so f*cking hot. No need to have my eyebrows waxed now. Unfortunately the heat also intensified my intestinal problem so I am lying on the edge of a ...

... s in the first three to go in, while the rest wait outside. After half an hour, we're all starting to worry about what the medical entails, but then find out that they've just been waiting (in a very hot room with no fresh air, and it's 33 degrees on deck) till the doctor arrived. We'd been expecting a hard time, but only had to fill in a form and sign it. At 6.45 Customs arrive, 7.15pm get our passports back, then ...

... existierte bis ins 11 Jahrhundert bis sie von Dschingis Khan erorbert und dem Erdboden gleich gemacht wurde. Sie war allerdings interessanter als ich erwartet hatte, und da praktisch niemand die Stadt sieht (es gibt kaum Besucher in Turkmenistan und bei den Touren liegt sie eigentlich nicht auf dem Programm) bin ich einer der wenigen die dieses UNESCO Weltkulturerbe (seit 2007) gesehen haben. Gruss Ralf

... local family, enjoying their cuisine and hospitality. This was the closest that I got to the Iranian border. The next day, we drove further west for quite a few more hours, crossing the desert (most of the country is desert). We camped on top of a plateau some 100 miles from the Caspian Sea. The plateau looks like a three-layered cake from a distance. Each layer is 10 millions years older than the next, we were told. I was very lucky that the temperature was quite decent ...

... the sun) atop the arch of neutrality was more absurd, but my favourite was the giant bull, with the earth atop his horns, covered with scenes of destruction (the 1948 earthquake that levelled Ashgabat and orphaned the Turkmenbashi), and atop this black mass... the golden child himself. Ridiculous. Equally ridiculous was the giant Runhama (the garbage written by the Turkmenbashi that passes as official cirriculum in Turkmen schools), which we heard ...

... Leader of the Turkmen, and used the slogan 'Halk, Watan, Turkmenbashi' (people, nation, me) - which is also on every building around :) His family have also been made part of this personality cult, with statues of his mother also seen on the streets. The month of April has also been renamed after his mother.... Turkmenistan is ...

Dear Long Lost Friends..... Well, I guess I should start off with an apology or state why I haven't had a chance to update this much. To begin with, I returned to site to find that my computer battery will not charge anymore, so that has significantly limited my transformation from all my thinking and journaling to typing time. Also, email and internet has been oddly weird here...I have created a new email address to respond from...so if you get an odd email from ...

Having resigned from my job and before returning to my beloved Vienna, off I went on four back to back Drago trips over three months from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, through, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan ending in Beijing, China. I met up with John, another passenger due on the trip at Heathrow airport and then the fun started. As we went through passport control a customs officer approached us with a dog and stopped John. We presumed they were looking for drugs and John ...