Adventures in Asia: Erbent, Turkmenistan

Around 13:00 today a driver picked me up from the Sport Hotel and drove me out of Ashgabat. This was interesting, because within about ten minutes of driving northeast we were out of the all-white, over-the-top, monuments-everywhere city and in neighbourhoods that looked much more "real." Just out of the city we pulled over to the side of the highway and I switched vehicles and met a new driver, Ishan. 

Ishan lives in the north, in Dashoguz, close to the Uzbek border. Much of his work involves driving tourists the route I am doing, from Ashgabat to the Uzbek border, or the other way around, but the road is so bad through the Karakum Desert that he tries to avoid driving it when not transporting tourists. In this case, he had driven tourists down to Ashgabat late last week, left his vehicle at the airport, flown home, stayed a couple of days, and then flew back to Ashgabat this morning. I was surprised to find this out and that this made economic sense. He also explained to me that he bought his vehicle used from the Persian Gulf region and that this is a common way to obtain vehicles--from the Gulf, up through Iran, to Turkmenistan. In fact, he let me know that he had purchased his last vehicle from a dealer in Ottawa, Canada and it was shipped to him via the Gulf, so I had missed driving in the Turkmenistan desert in a car from Canada by just a couple of years!

From Ashgabat to the village of Erbent (about 160 kilometres) the road was good and we reached this little village without issue just before 15:00. 

We are really in the desert now.

We had to stop here for fuel, and Ishan asked me if I would like to look around. It was plenty hot in Ashgabat, but here it was 42 degrees! 

Still, it seemed a shame not to see a little of the village, so Ishan suggested I walk around for five minutes. Apparently this village is actually quite new, and all of the residents were living nomadic lifestyles until about a decade or two ago. 

There is a little store here, the building behind the white vehicle, which is Ishan's.

My tour package includes dinner for tonight and water so I do not have buy anything, but I decided to get a cold beer here. 

Back at the highway, we stopped for gas and I took two minutes to walk around again.

Then I stepped into the air conditioned gas station shop with Ishan and he suggested we enjoy some ice cream bars from the freezer, so we did. "Cold is always good in the desert," he told me.