Today is day 2 of our 3 day tour of Turkmenistan.

After a long and bumpy ride from the Uzbekistan border to Darvaza Crater yesterday, I awoke this morning bright and early from another listness night’s sleep.

I’ll just say this – the Uzbeks and Turkmens like their mattresses hard and my little spoiled self likes them nice and soft and plushy.

I know, I know – first world problems.

An early breakfast

I had set my alarm for 5:30 but my bladder decided 5:00 was a better time to get up.

The entire camp was empty as I was the only one up.

There’s just something peaceful about being on your own in the quiet dark with only the sound of crickets in your ear.

Oh, and the humming of the generator but I chose to ignore that part.

With the solitude I took my sweet time getting myself ready for our 6am breakfast.

Soon everyone else joined me in the dining hall for that extravagant classic Central Asian breakfast of undercooked hotdogs and hard boiled eggs.

There was fruit, yogurt, and coffee as well but the staple was, and is always, those hotdogs and eggs.

I was actually able to snag the plate of cold leftover chicken from last night so breakfast actually turned out to be pretty decent.

Another long ride

The itinerary for today was taking us from here in Darvaza 280km straight south to the capital city of Ashgabat.

Yeah, another 280km road trip.

At least after an hour or so on the road, it became a nice smooth highway where we’d get up to speeds of 150kmh.

Even still, it took a good 3 1/2 hours to get down to the capital.

One cool little curveball they throw you as you get to the Ashgabat is that you have to switch to cars licensed to be driven in the city.

Our cars weren’t regional cars so they couldn’t be driven in Ashgabat which meant we all piled out of our two cars and squeezed into one minivan.

At least it was airconditioned but it was a little crowded.

We finally arrived at our hotel at 11am.

But, we wouldn’t be checking in quite yet…

Side trip to Old Nissa

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t prepared for this little side trip.

I thought we’d arrive in Ashgabat, have a four hour tour of the city, and then have free time for ourselves to wander around in the evening.

Old Nissa is a site of 3rd century ruins located 10km outside of the city.

While ruins are always cool to see, these ruins were kind of meh.

We only spent a half hour at them and it actually took us longer to get there and back than it did to see them.

Maybe I’ve become jaded when it comes to ruins.

After seeing incredible ruins in different parts of the world I may have just been overloaded on them and just don’t appreciate them anymore.

Anyway, the ruins were the ruins and we saw them.

A four star hotel

At 1pm we finally were able to checkin to our hotel.

The Sport Hotel here in Ashgabat is fancy but, then again, I’ve been staying in hostels and guesthouses so I guess anything would be fancy compared to them.

But, seriously, this place was nice.

Nice comfy beds, lots of space in our room, and the most amazing shower I’ve had since I left for this trip.

Ahhhh, good water pressure and nice, hot water.

Gold.   Pure gold.

Oh, and free wifi.

I mean, it was still heavily censored mostly when it came to social media but it was nice to be connected to the real world again.

At least I could update this blog and let people know I was indeed in Ashgabat.

The White City

Ashgabat is known as the white city because, by law, all structures and cars must be white.

There is a small percentage of cars that are also gold or grey but the vast majority are all white.

Seriously, everywhere you look, it’s white.

The city is actually in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the most marble in one area.

There are over 2000 white marble buildings and, as for the roofs, they must either be white, green or red matching the colors of the national flag.

The city itself is not walkable at all as everything is far apart.

And we would learn that fact over the next six hours…

The longest city tour ever

Remember when I said I thought we’d do a four hour tour of the city and then have free time for ourselves in the evening?

Yeah, that wasn’t going to be a thing today.

Not only did we start the tour much later than expected, it went on and on, and didn’t end until the sun had set and the street lights had been turned on.

Okay, so let’s talk about the tour…

Like I said, the city isn’t walkable at all so we’d go by car everywhere from site to site.

The city is filled with monuments and statues to past heroes and their independence.

Ironically, in a country that has been compared to North Korea, none of the monuments were dedicated to the ruling president or his predecessors.

Actually there was very little, if any at all, propaganda to be found at all.

And advertisements were nowhere to be found either.

Just a lot of white buildings and monuments.

We started the tour with lunch and then visited a Russian bazaar, the post office, and Lenin Park which were all nearby.

Next, it was off to what Oraz described as “a place of sadness”.

Memorial Park is a vast park with various statues and dedications to fallen heroes from various past wars and conflicts.

Aside from our little group, there were only 2 guards guarding an eternal flame and another one watching us in the entire vast complex.

I’ll give the Turkmens credit – they know how to build outstanding monuments and statues.

By 6pm, which was when I thought we’d originally be done with the tour, we went to the Ferris Wheel of Enlightenment.

Again, we were the only people here so we had the whole place to ourselves.

Oraz proudly hailed it as the largest ferris wheel in the world that’s indoors and that it was even in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Yeah, it’s indoors.

And it ain’t that large.

And because it’s enclosed indoors the ferris wheel compartments are like a sauna inside and, if I’m being honest, the views weren’t even that great either.

Overall, an epic letdown of a much hyped up ferris wheel.

Thankfully, our $6 entry ticket also included access to the little carnival next to it where we all took over the bumper cars and had the time of our lives.

Even the games attendant joined us and I’m pretty sure it’s the most fun he’s had in awhile.

Still, though, we were at the complex for a good hour and by now the sun was setting.

We weren’t done with the tour yet, though.

As the city turned to night we also visited the Monument of Neutrality signifying the fact that Turkmenistan is completely neutral and to prove it, they don’t have a single foreign military base on its’ land.

This was followed by the Wedding Palace where we were able to get a nice view of the now brightly lit city down below.

And, finally, we stopped by Independence Park before heading back to our hotel at 8:30.

In all, we toured the city for 6 hours and that is way, way too long to be in car going from place to place.

Dreams of free time to explore on our own were dead and so were finding somewhere nice to have dinner.

A late dinner

Since it was almost 9pm by the time we were able to get dinner, we ended up just staying at the hotel and visiting the Chinese restaurant on the top floor.

Honestly, the chicken fried rice I had for dinner was pretty damn good but, in my heart of hearts, I really wanted to go visit a true Turkmen restaurant and eat amongst the locals.

I did stop by the little cafe on the ground floor for some ice cream and you know I picked the one with a smiley face on it’s wrapper.

At the end of the day, a smiley face anything is the way to end the day.

And that’s how I ended this day.

Tomorrow is our last day of this tour and we’ll be heading east through the ancient city of Merv on our way to the Uzbekistan border.

More driving and more ruins are on our horizon tomorrow.

Hopefully the day just won’t be as long…