Turkmenistan is the strangest country in Central Asia — an all-white marble capital with gold statues and almost no people, the ruins of Merv where a million once lived on the Silk Road, and Darvaza: a gas crater that has been on fire since 1971, roaring in the middle of the black desert. You camp beside it. Almost nobody comes here: the country issues a few thousand tourist visas a year.
Ashgabat Architecture & Caspian Coast — 8-Day Turkmenistan is a 8-day private tour of Turkmenistan, run on your own dates with a private guide and driver. You stay in 4-star Ashgabat hotels and a desert camp at the Darvaza crater on full board, with the mandatory licensed guide and LOI both included.
Prices are per person and drop as your group grows — from $2960 per person for two travellers down to $1930 for a group of seven. Every departure is private: you never share the vehicle or the guide.
8-day Turkmenistan itinerary
Met at Ashgabat and taken to the Earthquake Memorial, which is where you have to start. In 1948 an earthquake destroyed the city in about ten seconds and killed something between a third and two-thirds of everyone in it — the true number was a Soviet state secret for forty years. The bronze bull with the earth splitting on its horns, and the mother lifting a child from the crack, is a genuinely powerful piece of work. Everything white and marble around you was built after that.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
A day inside the strangest capital in Asia. The record-holding marble buildings; the world's largest indoor Ferris wheel; a ministry of foreign affairs topped with a globe; an apartment block shaped like a book. The Ruhnama Monument is a giant mechanical copy of the previous president's spiritual guide — required reading for a driving licence — which opened every evening at eight and read a page aloud. Take it seriously or take it as theatre; either way there is nothing else like it.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
The National Museum has the Parthian ivory rhytons from Nisa, which are among the finest objects to survive from the ancient world. The Carpet Museum holds a single hand-knotted carpet of nearly 300 square metres — the largest ever made — and explains the five tribal guls, the medallions, that are on the national flag. The bazaar is where you buy one, or watch other people fail to.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
West along the flank of the Kopet Dag, the mountains that mark the Iranian border, and over into Balkan province — dry, empty, and heading for the Caspian.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
Turkmenbashi is the country's port on the Caspian, the largest enclosed body of water on Earth. It is a working oil and shipping town with a Soviet spine, and the waterfront in the evening is where everybody goes.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
Avaza is the state's attempt to build a Caspian riviera from scratch: a strip of large, gleaming, largely empty resorts on a beach that is genuinely good. It is either surreal or relaxing, depending on the day and your mood. Swim; the Caspian is barely salty.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
Inland to Yangykala on the way back — the banded pink-and-white canyon walls that were the floor of an ancient sea — then the long road east to Ashgabat.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
A transfer to Ashgabat airport for your flight. End of our services.
