Ashgabat - Istanbul

Up early Friday morning and Lynn drops me at Birmingham airport in time to catch my Swiss flight via Zurich (ZCH) to Ataturk International Airport. I then have a 5 hour wait until my onward flight to Ashkhabad with Turkish Airlines and finally land at Saparmurat Turkmenbashy International Airport (i.e. Ashgabat airport) a little ahead of schedule just before 03:00 (UTC+5).

As soon as you get of the bus at the terminal you pay 12USD for "I know not what". Immigration is likewise swift, just a stamp on my visa. Baggage claim was bedlam! Most of my fellow passengers were women and it seems that they must have been on a periodic shopping trip to Istanbul. I cannot believe that they had any baggage limits. I estimate that each woman had two trolley loads of packages which were unidentifiable because they were all wrapped in miles of cling film. The queue for customs moved very slowly but I eventually made it though and after a short taxi ride checked in to the Grand Turkmen Hotel at 05:01.

The local currency was confusing at first. The timing was unfortunate because they were in transition with the manat. Old manats and new manats were both in use as they were in transition following revaluation, 1 new manat = 5000 old manat. The official exchange rate is a quarter of what you get at a money changer. I got 2 new manat for 1USD.

Currency

I asked the hotel lobby if they had a map of the city, the answer was an abrupt no. Not surprised, got the same response in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. So I just wander and let serendipity take its course. The centre of Ashgabat has a lot of very new imposing buildings many of which have uniformed guards. There are lots of parks and an open aspect and although it is a city with a population over half a million it is never crowded. I eventually found the Russian Market and enjoyed looking at all the foodstuff and tried a triangular something that was probably a somsa. I ate near the Russian Market again in the evening at an outdoor place. As I sat drinking a Baltika 9 watching the waitress describing the options by impersonating a chicken I smiled to myself thinking that this is why I travel to these out of the way places.

I'm woken early by a phone call, the group have decided to skip the meeting and head out to the Sunday Market at 08:00. Brief introduction to fellow travellers and we drive a few miles north to the site of a vast Tolkuchka Bazaar. There are thousands of people, most of whom have arrived in one of the hundreds of buses in the vehicle park. After a couple of hours exploration we meet up again to walk over to the nearby animal market. Here we see flying camels (very unhappy looking camels suspended in cranes to move them around) as well as lots of other livestock that is for sale. We stop for a while and chat to a guy with some dogs. He tells us about the dogs and how they are used to guard against wolves and that their ears are clipped so that wolves cannot get hold of them by their ears.

Next stop is the Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque at Gypjak. Before visiting the mosque we took a look inside the next door mausoleum where Turkmenbashi is buried along with his mother, and his two brothers who were killed in the 1948 earthquake that leveled Ashgabat. You get an impressive mosque for 100 million USD and Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque is certainly big, the biggest in Central Asia.

When we get back to the Grand Turkmen Hotel we find that we have been turfed out for more important people attending some government meeting, we move to Hotel Ashgabat, definitely a move down market. More time exploring Ashgabat and preparing Iranian visa applications, if all goes well we will leave for Iran Tuesday morning. When we get the go ahead I go food shopping at the Russian Market with Carol and Deirdre, we are "cook group 2". Our final night we set about drinking all the alcohol that has been accumulated before we enter Iran.

On Tuesday morning at least one of us is a little worse for wear from the drinking the night before. I spend my remaining manat before we set of at 11:30. We travel about 50km to a checkpoint that I at first assumed to be the border and wait for our local agent to arrive with our passports from the Iranian Embassy. We kill time playing football, Frisbee and idle chat before the agent turns up with the good news that we have all managed to get a visa. It turns out that we have been waiting at a military checkpoint and they now let us through and we travel up into the mountains and the border proper. As we get to the Turkmenistan post the girls get into appropriate dress, particularly headscarves. Men too are affected but the most onerous restriction was not being able to wear shorts.

The border process is slow and bureaucratic but after a mere 5 hours we are through and we head south through the mountains in search of a place to camp before it gets dark. In the knowledge that fuel is cheap in Iran the drivers have cut it fine and while we get to a site we have insufficient diesel to manoeuvre on the steep slope! Dave and Mahdi (our local guide we met at the border) set off with a jerrycan to buy to fuel. Not an ideal site on the side of a hill but cook group rustle up a good meal as Dave and Mahdi return knackered with a full jerrycan.

As we crossed the border we changed time zone, a 90 minute change from Ashgabat. Iran is one of those unusual time zones (IRST) that is not on an integer number of hours offset from UTC, it is UTC/GMT +3:30 hours.

We are up just after 5:00 for a breakfast courtesy of cook group and on our way for an estimated 500km drive. The scenery slowly changes throughout the day, starting very arid but with harvested fields, in spring there is plenty of snow melt and rain for the crops. As we lose some altitude we start to see trees and even some areas of lush green paddy fields. We arrive at the Caspian Sea as the sun is setting.

Another site that is not ideal for camping and we have to set up in the dark. I'm on cook group and we had to cook while local teenagers rode motorbikes through our work area and fisherman towing boats were also constantly going past. Kaja became quite upset and worried about spending the night in her tent and finally slept on the truck.

Up at 05:30 to prepare breakfast in advance of another early start. After a short explore of the Caspian Sea shore and the remains of the abandoned village (abandoned after it flooded some years ago) we had camped at we set off for Tehran. We were making good progress along the road (101) that would have taken us past Mount Damavand (a volcano that is the highest peak in Iran) when we were stopped at a checkpoint and turnaround and told to take another route. So we had to backtrack and head for another route further east (79). The pass on route 79 was only about 2000m but still quite spectacular with good views to the west of snow capped peaks. The detour meant we arrived at the outskirts of Tehran at about sunset and the drive into the city was tedious and comparable to Bangkok though not as bad as Cairo! When we stuck in traffic people talk to us wondering where we are from and where we are going which brightened up a dull drive. We eventually get to the Atlas Hotel at about 20:00 and opt to eat what was a reasonable meal in the Hotel.

We have one full day in Tehran but being a Friday it is much quieter than other days and many establishments are closed, particularly in the morning. I have no particular place in Tehran I wish to see so plan to just wander. I head south through Ferdosi Square, noting for future reference the money changers, and then start taking random turns. Not a lot of activity on a Friday morning and I end up at Imam Khomeini Square. Nothing is inspiring me so head for Park-e Shahr, which is full of people. Buy a drink and a snack at a kiosk, use all my limited Farsi and encounter the Rial/Toman currency problem for the first time! There are all kinds of people in the park, families setup for the day on a blanket, people playing games and exercising, sitting reading, talking of just looking at the fountains. I am approached by several people and at first I am a bit at a loss to know how to respond but everyone is friendly and I chat for ages. The people I spoke to had varying degrees of skill in English but we slowly managed to communicate about all kinds of topics. On the one occasion it got to politics I made an excuse that it was time for me to leave.

I didn't take any pictures in Tehran for two reasons, mostly because I just didn't find anything that took my interest, but also because I met an Australian chap who had spent a day with the police because he had taken a photo that included a government building. The evening walk over to the old US Embassy was interesting with all the panels of graffiti.

The local currency is again confusing, but even more so. Initially everything is straightforward enough, exchange money get Iranian Rial. As with Turkmenistan best exchange rate is at a money changer. ~10000 Rial for 1USD. However it soon becomes apparent that there is another currency, the toman. 10rials = 1toman. Most prices do not indicate whether they are toman or rial!

Currency

It is Saturday morning and we are up early for a 06:30 departure. It's a long drive (~550km) with the occasional stop before we arrive at Yazd late in the afternoon. We stay at the Oasis Hotel which is very close to the Jameh Mosque in the old city. I like this traditional hotel with its open courtyard and daybeds to lounge around on. The rooftop restaurant was nice and a couple of us decided to forego sleeping in our rooms and sleep on the flat roof so that we could look at the stars and watch the sunrise.

No problem waking for sunrise! With Jameh Mosque just a few meters away the adhan wakeup call at about 04:30 is loud and clear giving plenty of time to wake up and get out of the sleeping bag. Sunrise was nice but not spectacular, once it was finished some tome for early morning conversation before breakfast. I'd had enough of vehicular travel and settled for exploring on those places I could reach on foot, i.e. within the old city.

I walked for hours along the small alleyways faced by adobe buildings. I visited Alexander's Prison which wasn't even worth the tiny entrance fee. While exploring I poked my head through the open door of a dilapidated looking building and the guy inside beckoned me to go in. He pointed to some steps and I decided to see where they led. After much meandering through this old building I ended up on the roof with great views over the old city. There roofs of were all interconnected and I wandered for quite a while before finding my way back to where I started and found the guy who had invited me in working at making a mosaic.

While walking near a market I was startled when a women stopped and said hello, that's all, but after the briefings we'd been given on dealing with local women I was startled. I remembered eventually that we were not to approach them, this turned out to be the first of many approaches made to me.

I spent the evening having a pleasant dinner at the nearby Silk Route Hotel with Holly and Tijen where we shared our respective experiences that day in Yazd.

Sunday morning starts with the early morning adhan again but the day will be spent travelling to Persepolis. We travel through several arid plateaux and one fertile area growing a variety of cereal crops, tomatoes and orchards until we make a brief stop at Pasargadae to visit the tomb of Cyrus the Great. From here it is only a short drive to Persepolis.