KEY POINTS:
"You want more melon?" Marta asked, sweat beading on her forehead, her eyes not quite focussing. I sighed, nodding. It was too hot.
Perhaps 45 degrees. Although a dry heat, in a small, luggage filled car it was oppressive, exhausting and eventually mind-bending.
We were in a desert, with only half a litre of water and no proper food. All we had were melons that had been given to us by friendly farmers.
Watermelons, honeydew melons and watermelon-honeydew hybrid melons.
Warm, slushy, pulpy, pip-filled melons. Melons that smelled sickly as they slowly cooked in our oven-like car.
After some thought, I decided that the melons were against us. Just like the desert and the corrupt, incompetent officials that extorted absurd new charges from us everywhere we went.
"Only the insane or deeply unfortunate find themselves in Turkmenistan in August" the Lonely Planet says, with characteristic smarminess.
As we approached Ashbagat - the capital of Turkmenistan - we realised that if we were insane, then at least we were in good company.
Rising from the desert before us were towering marble hotels and archways, fountains and monuments. Springing from lifeless sand were newly planted forests and man-made rivers, sucking yet more water from the Aral Sea. And from atop each pillar and monument, always watching, were golden statues of a chubby guy in a cape.
Otherwise the city was deserted. Like a mirage, it was a stark reminder of what too much desert sun and melon can do to the human mind.
"We are poor. Many universities and hospitals have closed, while our oil billions are wasted on these statues and hotels," a taxi driver explained to me the next day, shaking his head. "But who are they for? They are empty!"
The driver and I had a lot of time to discuss the madness of the late, cape wearing dictator Niyazov, as we floundered around the capital's wide boulevards, hopelessly lost.
All the street names had been removed a few years ago, replaced with four digit numbers. Numbers that I couldn't find and the taxi driver did not know.
"You must be careful what you ask," my second, equally disorientated driver had told me, when I tried to spark up another political conversation. "Everywhere they are listening." He was referring to the fact that places like hotel lobbies and cafes were bugged by the
secret police. Or perhaps he had just been eating too much melon.
In the back of my head I wished someone was listening. It would add excitement to the impressive, but ultimately artificial and dull new city. Perhaps I could ask whoever was listening for directions to my hostel.
Although small, the secret police might have known it. A hostel that also breeds hundreds of cooing and pooping pigeons would be quite well known, one would think. But then perhaps it's better not to think too much in Ashbagat. It's just too hot.
As we left the capital the next day, ploughing into the desert that occupies almost the entire country, we looked to see if we were being tailed by the secret police, as rally cars had in previous years. On the wide, smooth new road there was just a disappointing white Lada.
The driver tooted and smiled as he accelerated past us. Everyone tooted at us in Ashbagat. Even when coming towards us. The odd thing was that they didn't always wave, or even look at us. Was it our car? The beards? The white pants? What were they thinking, I thought, as I reached for another peice of melon.
Matt Kennedy-Good
Pictured above: Oddy drives through the "Arch of Neutrality" into Ashbagat (note golden head of late dictator adorning arch).
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