Turkmenistan

Konye-Urgench, Turkmenistan With August temperatures consistently over 50 degrees celsius and scant rain, you wouldn't expect the Karakum desert to be a very friendly place. But the combination hundreds of miles of sand dunes and animals out of a science fiction movie...

Ashghabat, Turkmenistan His father was killed by the Germans in World War II, his mother and sisters died in the devastating Asghabat earthquake of 1948. So Saparmurat Niyazov had a difficult childhood growing up in an orphanage, an experience which seems to have...

Ashghabat, Turkmenistan Also sprach Zarathustra. Nietzsche. Kant. I had just shown the border guard my German passport and out came the great names of German philosophy. It was a strange welcome to a remote border crossing between Iran and Turkmenistan. Everyone that...