After the night in Ashgabat 'White Gold' Hotel, back in the car to where the ride finished in Gok Depe yesterday evening.
First stop the Turkmenbashi Mosque & Mausoleum just outside Ashgabat. An extraordinary building - completed in about [2008], immense, golden-domed, pristine, adorned with the sayings of the first Turkmen President (Turkmenbashi) as well as verses from the Koran - set in manicured gardens - and empty but for Sohbet and me.
On to Gok Depe, where we visit another huge turquoise-domed mosque - built next to the ruined fortress which, in 1881 - the Russians over-ran after a siege - and massacred all the inhabitants,
Thence to a horse farm (today is Turkmenistan's National Day of the Horse). Mostly Turkmen tourists gather to watch Turkmen Akhalteke horses being led around a paddock. In the stables - [swallows/swifts] swoop busily around their nests in the rafters.
Then after a lunch of lentil soup, the 40km ride into Ashgabat; along the edge of an eight-lane motorway. The central aisle and road-side are planted to gardens - the tall-roadlights adorned with golden bands. For the last 30km or so, there is a bike lane alongside. I try it for a while - but there are so many sharply-angled stepped crossings over slipways that I give up and return to the motorway. Heavy traffic of cars, buses and lorries. Only white cars, and silver ones, are allowed in Ashgabat - where nearly all the buildings are white, the public ones clad in white marble (apparently imported from Italy). The city is low-rise and spread out. A population of c.1m is housed mostly in 4-5 storey high apartment blocks; white and uniform. Quite a few dowdy but not run-down Soviet era apartment blocks remain. We drive past grandiose modern buildings; museums, a theatre, corporate offices, a car park.
In the evening Sohbet announces delightedly that he has secured us places at a dinner accompanied by traditional Turkmen dancing. Music at ear-splitting volume.