On the way to the airport, we drove by a huge oil refinery. The refinery reports that its products are exported to Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Japan.
While Turkmenistan does have oil, its major product is natural gas. They built another new refinery in 2019 at a cost of $1.7B USD that is specially designed to produce gasoline and diesel fuel from natural gas. Natural gas is where the Turkmenistan's money comes from. They have the sixth largest reserves of natural gas in the world. For perspective, Canada's natural gas reserves are ranked eighteenth in the world.
Waiting for our flight in Turkmenbashi Airport.
Turkmenbashi Airport is pretty fancy!
Up in the air.
That looks like an interesting land formation down below.
Back to the outskirts of Ashgabat.
Green roofs.
KRW to ASB
Turkmenbashi to Ashgabat.
Our bus picked us up at the airport and we made our way to Old Nisa Fortress, One of five UNESCO World Heritage sites in Turkmenistan.
Old Nisa Fortress was the capital of the Parthian Empire that rules this part of central Asia for six hundred years between 300 BC to 300 AD.
Our guide Aziz, showing us the sites.
The round hall is where you make a wish while facing directly at the sun,
with your eyes closed, of course.
There was some kind of a photo shoot of a graduating class of students outside the fortress walls...
Scott and one of the Turkemistan students.
Scott borrowed his hat!
Then we had a 45 minute drive to a horse farm that breeds the rare Akhal-Teke Turkmenistan horses. There are only perhaps 6,600 of these horses in the world, and the vast majority of them are here in Turkmenistan. They are known for their endurance and short, shiny hair.
They set up some snacks and tea and coffee for us.
Aziz, with Ashir, the owner of the horse farm.
Ruth, saying hi to one of the horses.
Ashir, and one of the trainers.
The horses like to coat themselves with dust.
Ruth, Ashir, and Kevin.
Occasionally when I'm facing the sun, I get a rainbow effect. It happens more often than I'd like, but I usually just delete the photo. This one is kind of cool though.
Ruth got dressed up for a tourist photo.
And a quick ride on the horse!
From there, it was back to Ashgabat.
There are people cleaning everywhere!
They even had a guy who was dusting and washing the traffic signs!
We made a stop at the market...
These Caspian crayfish were live... all squirming around.
Different types of tea.
The official part of our tour was over, but we still had a few hours to spare, and there were quite a few more things we wanted to see. So one of the guys organized the bus and driver to take a bunch of us around for three more hours!
Too many more photos, so I'm doing a separate blog post for that... next up, Ashgabat at night!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Great deal on this 4 Person Camel Crown Camping Tent.
And in Canada...
Kitchen Aid Appliances on sale!
I recently saw a photo posted of the worlds largest enclosed Ferris wheel that is in Ashgabat? Have you seen it? I immediately thought of you and Ruth being in Ashgabat.
ReplyDeleteI am in the process of writing the next blog post. Check back in a half an hour or so!
Delete