the strange but interesting Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan wasn’t all that high on my wish list of countries to visit, but I’m glad that I accepted the suggestion of a friend that we visit last month. All that came to mind was the famous gas crater burning methane for the last 50 years (the so-called Gateway to Hell), but it turns out to not only have some great ruins (Old Nisa, Konya Urgench and Merv all being UNESCO-listed sites) but also a fairly interesting modern culture. One of the most sparsely populated nations on the Asian continent, mostly desert, It became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 (having also been under the Oghuz, the Seljuks, the Mongols … but with a largely nomadic population who never really kow-towed to anyone).). I suppose you could call it a benign dictatorship; no-one except the president is allowed to stand in its rare elections, but a good share of the country’s very great wealth (from its oil and gas deposits) is shared with the population in its pretty centralised econo