This morning we take a driving tour around Mary, which has some lovely buildings. The city was built by the Soviets as a centre for Gas & Cotton. It is very clean due to the men & women who we see sweeping the roads and weeding the gardens.
Most of the buildings in Mary are large & white with gold statues, except for the mosque that has a lovely blue dome.
The Turkmenistan women wear lovely bright long dresses with quite tall head scarves.
We stop at a local market to buy some fruit for our lunch as we’ll be on the road for most of the day.
Before we head out of town we stop to visit the Mary Museum which is right next to the hotel we stayed in last night. The displays are fabulous with a fully set up yurt with beautiful carpets, craft work of bright coloured fabrics & tassels. The display of archaeological objects date back 30,000 years & it is well worth the visit.
We drive out of Mary with a 438 km drive to Ashgabat through the desert. Fortunately the roads are a lot better than they were yesterday and it doesn’t feel as hot today so we make good progress. It seems quite dry, but there are crops growing on the side of the road and there are many melons for sale, so they must be getting water from somewhere.
The desert however is very dry & flat.
We stop at the ruins which used to be a very important town on the Silk Road, but there isn’t much of it left now.
Driving into Ashgabat the first impressions are of a very neat & clean city that we will see tomorrow.
When we arrive at the hotel we meet George & Cherie who are on a tour of “The Stans”. We catch up on all their travels over a beer and dinner, it’s hard to believe that 2 years ago we waved them good bye in Phoenix as they headed to LA and we continued onto Alaska to finish our Pan American trip.
Hi there,
As I see you will visit Hungary too. When will you arrive to Budapest? We have a small MG community here and we will be happy to meet the team.
Cheers,
Mihaly