To be clear, this wasn't where I had envisaged ending up on a night out in Ashgabat - the capital of the former Soviet Bloc state. Me and two Kiwi mates were lured here on the promise of a "disco" in the basement of the city's most luxurious hotel, the Grand Turkmen.
Broken English and our complete lack of Russian didn't help our fortunes - but hey, we had got a lot more out of Ashgabat than we expected. You see, Ashgabat is the centre of power for Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow - the long-time President of Turkmenistan, known for both his abysmal human rights record and iron-fist rule. Ashgabat is a reflection of Berdimuhamedow in many ways - initially appearing polished and poised, but paranoid and pretend on closer inspection.
_0208_-_father_sells_daughter.jpg "Sluts Turkistan")
For those reasons and more, the city of 1 million is often compared to North Korea's capital of Pyongyang. We'd found ourselves in this closed-off country, north of Iran, for a few days while driving 15, kilometres from England to Mongolia as part of the Mongol Rally. After entering the country on our strict five-day transit visas, the first thing we notice about Ashgabat is the astonishing level of grandeur and order. The highways are impeccable, whistle-toting police line the streets and the city's skyline almost wholly consists of large, white marble-cladded buildings.
On a side note, Ashgabat has the honour of holding a proper Guinness World Record for the city with the highest concentration of white marble buildings. But the thing is, this is all a sham - the city is a big, expensive fake, built purely to please an image-conscious leader. They were built purely to pump-up the country's image for the upcoming Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, described as a 'hello world' moment for the country. It's crazy money - but not totally surprising, considering President Berdimuhamedow's track record of skewed priorities and fostering a cult of personality.
As it turns out though, Ashgabat has an underbelly of beer-loving, karaoke-singing youth who want their secretive state to change tack and plot a new course. We made friends with a group of this burgeoning class of Turkmen thanks to the most typical of Soviet diplomatic tools - vodka.
