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  "path": "/2026/06/05/inside-turkmenistan-shadowy-hermit-state-slowly-opening-tourists-28433055/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-05T06:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://metro.co.uk",
  "tags": [
    "Lifestyle",
    "Travel",
    "History",
    "Soviet Union",
    "Travel Inspiration",
    "new Gorillaz track",
    "forced optimism",
    "belching firepits",
    "Instagram account",
    "Metro Deals",
    "Get deal now",
    "said it wants to simplify its visa regime",
    "economy",
    "six-hour flight from Gatwick?",
    "Iran",
    "Uzbekistan",
    "noted that",
    "Saudi Arabia",
    "presented Queen Elizabeth II",
    "stringent restrictions on photography",
    "Lupine Travel",
    "https://www.instagram.com/p/C_PGAerI-_1/",
    "de facto one-party state",
    "told RFE/RL‘s Turkmen Service",
    "strict deadline to lose weight",
    "Turkmenistan Airlines",
    "London Gatwick",
    "Turkish Airlines",
    "Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source"
  ],
  "textContent": "Surreal and secretive, few people have been to the most otherworldly of the Central Asian states (Picture: Laurie Noble/Getty Images)\n\n‘No more bad news, you can sleep well at night, and the palace of your mind will be bright,’ Damon Albarn croons on the new Gorillaz track, The Happy Dictator.\n\nThe satirical song, which critiques authoritarian control and the suppression of negative news to brainwash citizens into compliance, has an unusual origin story.\n\nAlbarn wrote it after travelling to Turkmenistan, a surreal Central Asian state where the ruling regime once decreed that people should think only happy thoughts under a policy of forced optimism.\n\nFor years, Turkmenistan’s image has rested on mystery: a white marble capital, belching firepits, and a political system that keeps outsiders at a distance.\n\nOf the five core ‘Stans’, it is the least Westernised, least visited (with just a few thousand foreign tourists annually) and by far the most secretive.\n\nTestament to its hermitic isolation is that the Instagram account for Turkmenistan Airlines, the national flag carrier, has just 7,375 followers.\n\n##  Best of Best of Metro Deals\n\nGet exclusive discounts with Metro Deals – save on getaways and spa days. Powered by Wowcher\n\n**Bannatyne Spa** : Spa day for two with treatments, lunch & prosecco — save up to 57% off.\n\n Get deal now\n\n**Mystery Escape** : Hotel stay with return flights from as low as £92pp — save on worldwide holiday packages.\n\nGet deal now\n\n**Beach Retreat (Lanzarote)** : 4* Lanzarote beach holiday with flights — save up to 58%.\n\nGet deal now\n\nBut slowly, and we do mean slowly, Turkmenistan is emerging from its self-created shell.\n\nNewlyweds Jemal and Serdar visiting the holy shrine at Gyz Bibi in traditional Turkmen dress (Picture: Mergen Annammamedovple)\n\nThe government has said it wants to simplify its visa regime, join the World Trade Organisation, and diversify the largely state-run economy that relies heavily on natural gas reserves and er… melons.\n\nIn other words, it wants to open up. So what’s in store for those who hop on the six-hour flight from Gatwick?\n\nWe spoke to locals and people who know the place well to find out.\n\n## White marble city\n\nTurkmenistan, a largely desert country which borders Iran to the west and Uzbekistan to the east, is the quirkiest kid of Central Asia.\n\nThe capital, Ashgabat (population: just over a million), has been rebuilt in the last two decades with profits from the country’s considerable gas reserves (the fourth largest in the world).\n\nAlong the main drag, Bitarap Türkmenistan Şayoly, are 170 buildings made of white marble. They are blinding in the sunlight.\n\nIn 2013, Guinness somehow declared Ashgabat to have the ‘highest density of white marble-clad buildings in the world’.\n\nThe statistic claimed is 48,583,619 square feet. Who measured it, unknown.\n\nMonochromatic architecture being insufficient, around 98% of the cars in the capital also white.\n\n‘Only a few are silver, so it’s kind of a unique thing for a city,’ Kirill Gorodnov, founder of Turkmenistan’s Hasyl Tour, tells **Metro**.\n\nThe Turkmenbasy Ruhy Mosque (Picture: DurkTalsma/Getty Images)\n\nHospitality is serious business in Turkmenistan, and the few thousand tourists who visit each year can expect a royal welcome.\n\n‘If you visit someone, thy will feed you with all food they have. Even if they do not have much, they will put on the table the best they have,’ Kirill says.\n\nLike much of Central Asia, the national dish here is plov, a hearty feed of slow-cooked rice, lamb or beef, and carrots, onions, and aromatic spices.\n\nAfter the meal, expect melons. Turkmenistan is famous for its exceptional, centuries-old varieties, prized since the Silk Road days and famed for their fragrance.\n\nThe best, Kirill says, are Waharman melons. ‘The taste is so sweet you won’t believe it, like honey.’\n\nIt’s a pity, then, that so few get to experience these things.\n\nA traditional Turkmenistan feast of plov (like pilaf), sweetcorn and melons (Picture: Hasyl Tour)\n\nAfter visiting Ashgabat, travel writer Christopher Wilton-Steer noted that sleek apartment blocks, enormous fountains and bombastic government palaces adorn the city, ‘but there is barely a soul to see them’.\n\nThe country’s symbol of an eight-pointed star is everywhere: on elevators, railings, windows, paving stones, and billboards.\n\nEven monuments are constructed in this shape. The most striking example is the Palace of Happiness, a 410,000 square-foot registry office topped by a disco ball inside a frame of eight-point stars.\n\nThe effect borders on cultish.\n\nThe Palace of Happiness in Ashgabat on March 16, 2026 (Picture: Xinhua/Shutterstock)\n\nAshgabat has the world’s largest indoor ferris wheel and what was once its highest unsupported flagpole, until Saudi Arabia swooped in and unveiled an even bigger erection.\n\nThe city is full of wide, sweeping boulevards and enormous equestrian statues that honour Turkmenistan’s greatest pride: Akhal-Teke horses.\n\nThese striking animals, with dark manes and a golden metallic sheen, have a surprising connection to the UK.\n\nIn 1956, renowned Turkmen horse breeder Babaly Taymazov presented Queen Elizabeth II with a magnificent buckskin Akhal-Teke named Melegush.\n\nThe gift is said to have sparked a genuine admiration within the British monarchy for Turkmen riding culture.\n\nOther sights of note include the Arch of Neutrality, a rocket-like tripod with lifts up its splayed legs, and the Gypjak Mosque, which can fit ten thousand worshippers and houses both the Quran __ and the Rhunama, or ‘Book of the Soul’, a bizarre piece of literature written by the first post-USSR president, Saparmurat Niyazov.\n\nThe Arch of Neutrality, topped with a 12-metre gold statue of President Niyazov (Picture: Bjorn Holland/Getty Images)\n\n## Beards, bread and ballet dancing\n\nAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan became notorious as the most authoritarian and difficult former Soviet state to visit.\n\nThat was all down to President Niyazov, better known by his nickname Turkmenbashi, or ‘Head of the Turkmen’.\n\nFollowing independence from Moscow in 1991, Niyazov declared the country ‘permanently neutral’ and shut its doors to most visitors.\n\nIn his time, he was regarded as the most repressive ruler in the region.\n\nAs well as banning beards, ballet dancing and the word for ‘bread’ (replacing it with his mother’s name), the dictator closed every library and hospital outside the capital in a country where more than half the population lived in rural areas.\n\nRussian President Vladimir Putin (left) and Turkmenistan’s President Saparmurat Niyazov (right) share a laugh during talks in the Presidential Palace in Ashgabat on 19 May 2000 (Picture: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nHe outlawed car radios (apparently ‘useless’) and changed the names of the months in honour of his own family.\n\nWhen he gave up smoking after major heart surgery in 1997, he banned smoking in public places, and all his ministers had to follow suit.\n\nHe also adopted one of the world’s strictest visa regimes, which remains largely in place two decades after his death.\n\nA golden statue of the first Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov in Ashgabat on 24 November 2021 (Picture: Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)\n\n## Glasnost?\n\nSince 1991, Turkmenistan has imposed rigorous rules on would-be visitors.\n\nTravellers face arbitrary rejections of visa applications, and those who make it inside are met with stringent restrictions on photography**** and movement.\n\nFor years, a letter of invitation was required from the immigration service, followed by a visa on arrival.\n\nTurkmenistan’s then-new president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov delivers a speech to People’s Congress members during his oath ceremony in Ashgabat on 14 February 2007 (Picture: Mustafa Ozer/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nBut in April 2025, Turkmenistan seemed to follow in the footsteps of other Central Asian countries, with the passing of a law that paved the way for a new electronic visa system and makes it easier for foreigners to enter.\n\nInsiders who organise trips to Turkmenistan describe a recent loosening in official attitudes towards international visitors.\n\nDylan Harris, head of British alternative tour company Lupine Travel, says the visa process has become ‘a lot more efficient’.\n\n‘At the moment you still need the letter of invitation, which we [the tour operator] obtain, but now the process is digital, not manual, and the visa approval times are really quick, in the context of Turkmenistan,’ he tells **Metro**.\n\n> https://www.instagram.com/p/C_PGAerI-_1/\n\nProcessing has dropped from 12 weeks to two weeks, says Dylan, and his company has not had a single rejection in the past year.\n\n‘There’s a lot more certainty with everything now,’ he adds.\n\n‘Even people with fairly sensitive occupations who were completely rejected before, they’ve been issued visas without any problems. It’s all signs of things moving in the right way.’\n\nBut as for the e-visa? No sign yet. Insiders tell **Metro** there are plans for an autumn launch, but Dylan wonders if it’s ever going to happen.\n\n‘It’s been over a year now and there’s still no sign of it going live,’ he says.\n\n‘You hear rumours of it every couple of months, but then nothing comes through.\n\n‘I’m a bit sceptical if it’s ever going to happen, but you never know with Turkmenistan! There’s very little way of knowing exactly what goes on.’\n\nThe People’s Memory Monument Complex ‘Ruhy tagzym’ in Ashgabat (Picture: Andrey Kulagin/Getty Images)\n\nDylan has been running trips to Turkmenistan since 2010 and says ‘it’s the most popular it’s ever been’.\n\nNow, he runs 15 trips a year: three standalone Turkmenistan itineraries, the others part of a combined ‘five Stans’ tour that show the highlights of each.\n\n‘Some only want to visit [Turkmenistan] for the gas crater, others are more interested in the Silk Road history. Then there are people who are trying to visit every country in the world,’ he says.\n\n## The ‘Gates of Hell’\n\nTurkmenistan is twice the size of the UK, and almost as big as Spain.\n\nThe loner republic, which state statistics say has a population of about 7 million people, also has more than 3,000 miles of railways that stretch into Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Russia, and across the vast expanse of the Karakum Desert which covers 80% of Turkmen territory.\n\nIt is an extraordinary place, with suddenly blooming oases where cool water babbles in streams and mulberry trees hug the edge of green fields.\n\nThe most celebrated sight in these parts is the ‘Gates of Hell’ at Darvaza, a massive molten crater that’s been spewing fire for decades.\n\nLike many things in Turkmenistan, its origin is shrouded in mystery.\n\nTourists around the Darvaza gas crater in April 2024; it is often nicknamed the ‘Gates to Hell’ (Picture: Kokkai Ng/Getty Images)\n\nBut the story goes that in 1971, Soviet geologists were drilling for oil when they hit a pocket of natural gas. This caused the earth to collapse, forming three large sinkholes.\n\nIn order to prevent the poisonous methane from leaking into the atmosphere, it’s rumoured that someone took out a match and lit one on fire, thinking it would burn out in weeks.\n\nReally, no one knows how this hellish inferno actually came to be.\n\n## ‘Look presentable’\n\nTurkmenistan is a de facto one-party state with no serious opposition permitted. Should that put you off?\n\nOnly if you also want to discard China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and Eritrea.\n\nDazzling Ashgabat (Picture: Amine Bouzidi Idrissi/Getty Images)\n\nIn April, Ashgabat hosted an international tourism conference with the aim of ‘strengthening Turkmenistan’s presence on the international tourism map’.\n\nBut any shift in attitudes to outsiders has not extended to its own citizens.\n\nIn April, police scoured rooftops across the country for Starlink satellite terminals, used by residents to sidestep restricted internet connections.\n\n‘They come and go straight to the roof,’ one resident of the eastern city of Turkmenabat told RFE/RL‘s Turkmen Service, on condition of anonymity.\n\n‘They check who has what. If a Starlink system is found, they take the device away.’\n\nThe Independence Monument in Ashgabat (Picture: Xinhua/Shutterstock)\n\nLast August, performers in the state-controlled culture sector were given a strict deadline to lose weight and ‘look presentable’ in time for the nation’s Independence Day, or face consequences, several employees told RFE.\n\nOfficials allegedly threatened that those who failed to lose weight would lose their jobs, and no longer be allowed to appear onstage or on TV.\n\nOne performer said authorities don’t want them to be ‘too thin,’ either.\n\nLike many places these days, Turkmenistan’s ruling crowd is questionable.\n\nBut the people that we spoke to for this article were all warm, kind, and excited to welcome new guests.\n\nWhether it opens much further remains to be seen.\n\nThis country of curiosities and contradictions is the traveller’s final frontier.\n\n##  Getting to Turkmenistan\n\nFor the time being, a letter of invitation is still required. This will be retired with the introduction of the new e-visa, whenever (if ever) that launches.\n\nIf you’re travelling with a group, tour firms take care of the red tape.\n\nTurkmenistan Airlines flies from London Gatwick to Ashgabat on Wednesdays and Saturdays from £727 return.\n\nAlternatively, Turkish Airlines flies from London to Ashgabat via Istanbul from £1,370 return.\n\nComment now Comments \nAdd Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source\n",
  "title": "Inside Turkmenistan, the shadowy hermit state that’s slowly opening to tourists"
}