Turkmenistan
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Thursday, April
15, 2004
Friday, April 16, 2004
Saturday,
April 17, 2004
Sunday, April 18, 2004
The Turkmen guard at the border bridge makes a
preliminary Passport and Visa check. The soldier's brown uniforms and large sun
hats resembles American Ranger's attire rather than military uniforms. A Japanese
made minivan takes us to the Turkmen border post. The driver even charges for
the trip - this is where some of our last Iranian Rial's comes in handy. The van
is apparently converted from right-hand to left-hand drive. The dashboard is completely
torn out and the plastic parts lie in the back seat, and all cables and fittings
are completely in the open.
The buldings looks worn and old. Some lorries are
inspected thoroughly. The cabs have to be tilted forwards and all cargo is carefully
searched. The drivers carry parcel after parcel, apparently part of a lorry cargo,
into the customs building. Every parcel has to be opened and x-rayed.
Our passports
are examined at a counter. A female border guard with glittering gold-teeth speaks
fairly good English. She explains that our guide must pick us up here, but that
she hasn't seen any guide yet. Without a guide tourists cannot go further into
Turkmenistan than this neglected customs building. The time is already after the
agreed latest time for the border pick-up, 4 pm Turkmen time. We are worried that
maybe something has gone wrong in the mess of schedule changes for Turkmenistan
during the last few days. We have no means of contacting the guide, as there is
no mobile-phone coverage here.
While we are trying to sort things out we get
word that our guide has arrived. Her name is Anzhelina, and she welcomes us to
Turkmenistan. She is of Armenian origin, but born in Turkmenistan and Turkmen
citizen. She speaks English, Russian, and Armenian, but hardly any Turkmen though;
in the Soviet Union, the lingua franca was Russian. For her work as a tourist
guide, this is really no problem because nearly everyone is Turkmenistan speaks
Russian as a second language. Her children, who only speak a little Turkmen, will
have problems in this country because university courses and similar will be held
increasingly in Turkmen only in the future.
This problem is the same in many
former Soviet Republics: People were moved around more or less voluntarily and
then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, they found themselves being "foreigners"
in a country the language of which they don't speak.
This is the first time
that Anzhelina picks up tourists at this border post, and so it took her some
time to find the right place.
There is a number of formalities but without
any problems. Our luggage is X-rayed but not hand-checked. Valuables and currency
must be declared in detail, our travel documents are examined (in addition to
passport with visa and the invitation, a special "Travel Pass" is required,
Anzhelina is bringing this with her). She does most of the paper work.
The
English-speaking border guard is really pleasant, she jokes and explains the procedures.
She probably likes to have a bit of variety between the usual lorry checks, and
being able to practice her English.
We are allowed to leave the Turkmen border
post after about an hour. We leave the gated area and now we are told where we
will spend the night. Our schedule says "Guest House" and we were expecting
something like a very simple hotel, but we are actually going to have a homestay
with a family. This little village in the restricted border area, which may only
be visited by special permission, has no hotel. One of the family sons who speaks
fairly good English, picks us up in his car. During the trip we see many political
posters with slogans and the portrait of President Niyazov. At the house we are
met by the head of the family.
It turns out to be some kind of a family clan,
which is very rich by Turkmen standards. They have a large property with almost
one house for each family member. The interiors are mostly traditional with fine
carpets and lots of paintings on the walls.
It is amazing that this family
- in spite of their obvious wealth - haven't made any great investment in sanitary
installations. With all due respect the toilet, consisting of a hole in the yard
floor, is the worst we have ever seen. The flies are so fat they can hardly move.
During
the evening there is a power failure in the house, which is repaired by an electrician
with thick rubber gloves. With his hands he twists together some live electrical
wires.
We are treated to a very fine dinner with many vodka toasts. In fact
it's a bit too much of both food and drink. Till who is a teetotaller can barely
swallow the vodka. Most of it ends up in the grass...
We sleep on carpets with
thin mattresses in a side room. Anzhelina will be
sleeping very deeply, she
has really had too much vodka...
Thanks to Jonny Saljefeldt for help with translation!
The next morning, we have to get up early, as
we still have to buy tickets. It's best to do this right away when the counter
opens at 7 am. The eldest son of the family follows with us, with the family's
position in the town, the tickets shall not be any trouble.
The station is
a representative building, probably built when the international passenger train
to Iran was inaugurated. There are signs in several languages "Domestic Departures",
"International Departures" and so on. This station has to our knowledge
during its existance seen two (!) regular international passenger trains: The
inauguration train Tehran - Almaty and the reverse journey of the same train.
Then the connection was cancelled, and nowadays, there are only a few domestic
trains to the capital Ashgabat, at the time writing two train pairs a week. And
for that, there is this huge station!
We take some photos in secret on the
platform as we go to the train. As expected, it consists of Soviet-era vehicles,
a Diesel double loco of two six-axled units with a few seating coaches and a red
car at the end we first assume to be a restaurant car. However, a closer look
shows that it is a "Defectoscop", as it is written in kyrillic letters
on the side, obviously some kind of measurement and inspection car to observe
the line.
The train is better maintained than we expected after all we have
read about Turkmenistan. The (very thin) seat cushions are quite worn, but apart
from this, everything is intact and somewhat clean. But the seats are really hard,
and that for a 9-hour trip... We leave with about half an hour delay as we have
to wait for a delayed cargo train in the inverse direction.
Anzhelina is allowed
to sleep on in the crew's compartment which has a small bed; the Vodka consumption
from the evening before can be seen in her face... The train runs very slowly,
frequently some 60 km/h only. The track is quite bad, a bit better later as we
come to the main line Mary - Ashgabat and closer to the capital. The train becomes
more and more crowded, in the end, many must stand. Several times, we cross the
channel that drains water from the Amu Darya river to cotton fields, which is
a main reason for the falling water level of the Aral Sea.
Many locals sell
food and other goods on the platforms and in the train. Most cities and villages
along the line look neglected.
In the late afternoon, we arrive in the capital
Ashgabat. In some way, it feels like coming back to the modern communication society
- for the first time since we've left Turkey, we can use our mobile phones.
Two
of Anzehlina's colleagues are waiting for us, they are supposed to buy our tickets
for the night train to Turkmenabat (former Charjou), a city close to the Uzbek
border, for the evening the next day. They tell us later that the ticket vendor
actually hesitaded to sell the tickets as Turkmenabat is not explicitely listed
on our visa. After all, we are just going to change from the train to a car to
the border there! That's Turkmen bureaucracy, but it worked out.
We are finally
driven to our hotel "Asiya", that is situated a bit outside the centre.
While the rest of the country is neglected, enormous resources are obviously spent
on giving the capital a representative appearance. Everything is clean and modern,
with huge buildings and monuments. The face of the president is as unavoidable
as the one of Khomeini in Iran. On all banknotes, on posters, ...
The hotel
is built somewhat in Chinese style and obviously aimed to Chinese tourists, but
it is nearly empty. There are several other hotels in different styles in the
same street. Even if there may be more visitors in the main season, the hotel
capacity appears to be grossly over-dimensioned. We have big, fine rooms, nothing
wrong with this, but in this city, everything appears a number too big.
Around
9 pm, a hotel employee knocks at Till's door and starts speaking Russian. Despite
Till's extremely limited Russian knowledge, it becomes quickly clear that the
guy wants to offer a prostitute. We have not experienced that so openly before.
The
next morning, we shall visit a locomotive depot. An English-speaking guide from
the railway is supposed to show us around. Her name is Natashja, she picks us
up at the hotel and even speaks well German. She tells us that we are going to
look at the railway station (however, taking photos is forbidden) and after this,
a city sightseeing. It shows out that she is not at all from the railway but a
normal tourist guide. We explain to her that we were promised a visit at a depot
and that we had to pay 90 US-$ for this. Although our travel agent was assured
several times by his local Turkmen partner that we could visit a depot, it went
wrong. That is a disappointment, of course, but as the promised permission never
existed, there is nothing we can do about it on the spot.
At the station, Natashja
talks to a security officer who permits us to take a photo of a locomotive. Now
we must be fast, as the train on the platform is about to leave, and only on the
way back we notice why it is such a strict guarding on the first car - it's actually
a prisoners' car with 5 soldiers in front of it. Then we go a bit by car along
the railway in both directions and take some photos outside at the line where
there are no police.
Afterwards, we make a sightseeing tour that shows us even
clearer than we've already seen how unbelievably over-dimensioned the city is.
It is full of huge-scale monuments, such as the earthquake memorial monuments
(the city was nearly completely destroyed in 1948), the monument of independency
and the neutrality monument. The president's palace is enormous as is the parliament.
The share of responsibility between works approximately like this that the president
takes the decisions and the parliament says "yes". All these buildings
have obviously been erected in the desire to be a city and a country of global
importance.
Later, we meet Anzehlina again who will follow us in the overnight
train to Turkmenabaf (former Charjev) close to the Uzbek border. We leave Ashgabat
in the late afternoon and make ourselves comfortable. The night train is the exact
opposite to the day train we used the day before. Now it is quite soft (the sleeper
cars are of the same GDR-built type with 4-berth components that can be seen everywhere
in the former Soviet Union), but the maintenance is limited to the very essential.
The interior is very worn and dirty, many things are out of order like broken
door locks, missing light bulbs and more. On the toilet, which is not suitable
for sensitive souls, Till nearly locks himself in as the door lock is extremely
hard to operate. Luckily, the conductor notices it and opens the door from outside.
Poor
Anzhelina! We are certainly the most exhausting tourists in her career as a guide...
She has never taken the train in Turkmenistan before we came. She was actually
also the guide of Mario & Susi, a German couple on a round the world trip
with whom Till is in contact. we threaten her to come back and travel on the whole
Turkmen railway network with her.
Together with us in the coach, there is among
others a gentlemen who has been in Germany and participated in an international
defence conference. He is very impressed about Germany and finds that it is a
very cheap (!) country. However, this may be due to that he was invited to the
hotel and probably most other parts of his stay...
Bengt kills a couple of
cockroaches before we go to sleep. The mattrasses are very dirty, so we nap to
the offer to get sheets for a small extra fee. Those show not to be newly washed
either, but they are better than the mattresses, at least.
The train is not
particularly fast, we need more than 13 hours for 587 km... During the evening,
it starts raining, actually unusual for the very dry and hot Turkmenistan. We
are happy to travel now in spring, the temperatures have been pleasant, now it
is even becoming a bit cool. Not pleasant to be here in summer when it can be
40 degrees and over 50 in the desert.
In the early morning, we arrive at Turkmenabat.
Antonia, ahother colleague of Anzhelina, take over. She follows with us and Barbara,
who works as a nurse at the US embassy in Almaty, to the Uzbek border. There is
not time for sightseeing, the car is waiting. There is a parallel railway line
to Uzbekistan here as well, but unfortunately, there are no passenger trains any
longer. The not so successful passenger train Teheran - Almaty took this route
on its only journey as well.
After a while, we come to a bridge over the Amu-Darya.
There is a military post there, behind the bridge, there is obviously a restricted
border area that may only be entered with a permission. However, there is a problem:
The river has high water. In Turkmenistan with its sparse vegetation and its dry
ground, strong rainfalls like in the night before quickly lead to high water in
the few rivers. It is a pontoon bridge, and we learn a bit later that it is damaged
and can not be crossed with vehicles before reparation.
We have to get off
the car and walk over. Several hundreds of metres away, we see the railway bridge,
a steel construction from the Tsar's era when the Trans-Caspian railway was built.
From a distance, it looks intact, couldn't they run replacement trains for the
cars...?
We come to the damaged part of the bridge. Two bridge elements are
only linked together in one damaged hinge, the other three are broken. There is
a wide gap where the hinges are broken and a slippery floor, we cross carefully
at the edge where the bridge elements still are linked together. A towing boat
is connected to the bridge with steel wires, it pulls against the stream at full
power so that the damage shall not worsen. Some workers are bringing a Diesel-powered
welding machine. Before them, we have seen a "delegation" of gentlemen
dressed in suits that has come in a 4-wheeled vehicle and is obviously supposed
to judge the damage and to decide about measures to be taken.
On the other
side of the bridge, a couple of taxis are waiting, so that we can continue immediately.
It is not far until the border post comes in sight. Lorries that have made it
over the bridge before it was damaged are still waiting in line. We get off the
taxi at the first control post before the actual border post and walk.
We learn
that there are computer problems and that it may take a while until we can continue.
At one place, small dishes and drinks are served, we want to spend the waiting
time there, but it soon goes on. At the next post, there is the actual exit control.
It's the normal Central-Asian bureaucracy, but it works not too badly. There is
a minor extra hassle for Barbara who did not get any customs form at entry for
some reason - now she is asked for it, but it works out.
After about an hour,
we say good-bye to the guide Antonia, leave the Turkmen border post with the exit
stamps in the passports and walk on a few hundred metres to its Uzbek counterpart
