Below are some of my final pictures from Moscow. The city today is unrecognisable from the snowy wasteland we arrived to in January and there is no doubt that summer has arrived. I’m back in the UK now and looking forward to the busy sports season ahead. At the moment I have a few ideas of how I’m going to present my favourite work from the past 9 months but it’s going to take a while as I want to make it’s something special. I’m afraid it’s back to cricket now…
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Here are a 2nd set of films scans from Uzbekistan. All the pictures below are from Samarkand, an ancient town full of these beautifully restored Madrasahs. The colour and detail of the restoration work is amazing and the whole town made for great pictures. Add a few old people in there and voilà…
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After 3 days in Turkmenistan our next stop was Uzbekistan. We spent two days in the capital Tashkent and a day in Samarkand, the country’s 2nd biggest city best known for its amazingly restored Madrasas, or Koran schools. Uzbekistan felt a lot more Asian than Turkmenistan, probably because we actually saw a lot of other people, the majority of which were incredibly friendly. People were more than happy to be photographed and this made a nice change from the aggressive nature of most Russians in this respect. Tashkent seemed like an incredibly busy, bustling city with a lot going on. The central market was pretty spectacular and I’ll post some pictures of that in a couple of days. For now I’ve just started with some films scans and there’s a lot more to come…
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Without doubt the highlight of our time in Turkmenistan was the night we spent next to the Darvaza gas crater. Darvaza is situated bang in the centre of the country, about 250km north of Ashgabat, and is the product of Soviet gas exploration gone badly wrong. In 1971, while drilling for gas, the ground under the rig collapsed leaving a huge crater with a diameter of 70 metres. To stop poisonous gases escaping they decided to set the crater on fire (very Russian thing to do…), with some clever little Russian predicting the fires would burn out in a couple of days. Well, somebody obviously got their calculations a little wrong as 41 years later the fires are still burning strong! I’ve captioned some of the pictures and there is a short video at the bottom to show you what the landscape was like and what awful music we had to put up with in the car…
Our half way pit stop
The current Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov watches over us as we eat
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov cutely decorated with tinsel
Our Russian driver, Dima. For the trip into the desert he donned the full camo...
The Darvaza gas crater, which was only meant to burn for a few days, still burning away 41 years later
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Dima cooking us some great Shashlik (kebabs)
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Here are a collection of photographs taken in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. Without doubt, this was by far the weirdest city I have ever been to. The majority of the city was built from scratch in the 90s and is a ghastly collection of huge glossy marble monuments, apartment blocks and boulevards. The weirdest part? There are no people… Driving and walking around you had to look hard to find signs of life. Of course our guide was adamant that all the brand spanking new flats were full of government workers but they were nowhere to be seen. It seemed hanging clothes out to dry was a crime punishable by death as the buildings looked deserted. The one place we did find other people was in the Soviet era old town. Built after the earthquake in 1948 had levelled most of the town, this part of the city had a lot more charm and character and was much more interesting to walk around. This was where real Turkmens lived their lives, not in the fake, superficial high rise city built by a showy megalomaniac. Next to come: pictures from our drive through the desert to the Darvaza gas crater, aka the Gates of Hell…
A statue of the Ruhnama - a book written by the last President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov. He is better known for the name he gave himself, Turkmenbashy, which means "Leader of Turkmens". The book is all about the glorious history of the country and how to conduct yourself as a good Turkmen citizen...
