Four weeks, two stans and one ferry

Well we've finally made it to the fabled stans. Unfortunately it seems most of the internet cafes are too slow for this site so apologies for the big gap and here's a summary of the last four weeks:

1. The ferry across the Caspian: This was supposed to last between 12 and 18 hours. I guessed 16 and Tom, ever the optimist, 14. In the end it took 53, most of them spent within sight of Turkmenistan waiting for train to take the wagons out of the hold beneath us. That's 53 hours sharing a squat toilet with a girl with diarrhoea and an overland bus group who drank every drop of alcohol on the boat, mixing the final dregs with the rehydration salts from their 1st aid kit. Like being on a cruise ship without the cruising... (or enough food)

2. Ashgabat: The white marble capital of Turkmenistan, dripping in oil dollars, was meant to resemble Kuwait but also seems a bit like Milton Keynes. There are enormous roads laid out on a numerical grid, ridiculous gold statues and every type of fountain under the sun. There aren't however many people around so it's hard to tell how much they like the place or whether they'd rather the money was spent on more schools and hospitals.
Most of the statues were put up by the former president Turkmenbashi ("father of the Turkmens") the Great who died a cople of years ago and are of himself. The one that rotates to face the sun is pretty good but my favourite was the earthquake monument. Built to commemorate a 1948 earthquake that killed 90% of the city's population, it's a black bull with a shattered globe on its back. Right in the middle a woman is holding out a little gold statue of Turkmenbashi.

3. The Karakum desert: our first desert and it rained. You can only travel in Turkmenistan with a guide but here it was worth the expense as ours had a four-wheel drive and a tent so we were able to head off in the dunes to see the weird Darvesa gas craters. These three huge circular pits seem to have been an accidental creation of Soviet gas prospectors but no one is quite sure. Two have bubbling mud and water and the third, which we camped by, does a good impression of your average Biblical-style hell.

4. The silk road cities: It's a bit unfair to bump Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand into one bullet point but I've already written too much. Our overall impression was of far too much heat (30 degrees at 9 in the morning) and lots and lots of blue tiles. There are minarets, mausoleums, mosques and medrassas throughout all three and they're all covered in beautiful swirling blue patterns and a good handful of turquoise domes.
The degree of restoration seems a bit excessive in some places (the Soviets even invented a new dome in one case) but it does help recreate the atmosphere and there are still a few romantic ruins if you search around.
Everyone raves about Bukhara but we preferred Khiva, packed into its city walls, and Samarkand which is more spread out but has by far the most impressive buildings.

5. Nurata mountains: We broke up the blue tiles a bit with a visit to a homestay in the mountains north of Samarkand. Just back this morning and I'm already missing our breezy tapchan (tea platform) under the walnut trees. No one spoke english but there were endless cups of green tea, beds under the stars and lots of baby animals. With most things still donkey powered it was unnervingly like stepping into an old black and white photograph of ye olde devon.