How do you get in to Turkmenistan? I can tell you, with great difficulty. You get a mini bus driver to take you to the Embassy but he insists on going to where it used to be so iot takes an hour and a half to find down a back alley in the heat. You wait outside for some hours while something happens inside and then you leave while your crew try and pay and get the visas. You wait all day while you try and get passage on the mystery freighter that may or may not sail. About 9pm you walk to the port and wait on the roadway by the customs post and imagine that a boat has docked. When you realise that the boat is not here you get in a sleeping bag and wait. About 4am a boat arrives and you play games with customs, stand here, stand there etc. When you get on the boat expecting hell you find it is actually OK and set sail. We arrived off the coast of Turkmenistan at about 7pm where we dropped anchor and got in to port at 2pm the next day!!
Turkmenistan is a desert and a police state so no suprise with customs. Stand in 40 degree heat until a door opens and you are beckoned in by a soldier. Go to a window and get given your passport, take to another window get pieces of paper, go to first window again get stuff done, go to room and get swabbed for something. Go through a scanner and empty all your belongings for examination and then wait hours for the truck. I can,t explain the toilets you would not believe me. Having escaped the port with our minder we drive into the dese wh we are stopped by the Police and told we missed a piece of paper which is brought to us.
The next day we have to register our existence which takes another 2 hours. We drive through the desert to Ashgabat. This is either 1984 or North Korea. There is an 11pm curfew and we are woken at 6.20 am as the president is driving past and
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