Fintan had said "It's a shame we don't get to go to the Aral Sea, that would've been cool"... perhaps I'm too honest - I did tell him we would be close to an old fishing town when we were at Nukus. Moynaq, one of the two major fishing towns on the old Aral Sea, is about 200 km from Nukus... so off we went. Again, the road was rough and long... a 4 hour drive to the site of the rusting fishing boats, sat sadly in the sand... but on the way the area seemed surpris...

In Nukus there seems to be not much going on... it's a fairly isolated town, but this seems to be the reason that it is famous. The Savitsky Art Museum is a collection of works by artists during the Soviet era who didn't really conform. Artist and collector Igor Savitsky managed to keep these works safe in the desert. The collection is overwhelming! Only 3% of the collection is on show, but still - it seems like every surface is covered! Everything from jeweller...

Konye Urgench was a massive city, so beautiful that Tamerlane thought it competition to Samarkand and so had it razed to the ground. In all the city was destroyed 7 times, only for the people to return and rebuild. The 5 or 6 buildings that survived are subject to huge speculation as the original use and reasoning for why these buildings were spared is unknown. One thought is that these buildings were important for the local population and to gain the respect of ...

From Ashgabat we took to road north, I think the term road is being used here in the loosest sense. It was tarmac-ed, but there didn't seem to be any foundations to the road and obviously overloaded trucks use this route. The peaks and troughs in the road marking the lanes. Good thing we got new suspension, and raised the height of the car! The drive took us by a set of craters. The first filled with water and you could see bubbles coming to the surface. The sec...

5am... knock, knock! Who's there? Why the skipper of course, miming for us to pack our things - we are here! Turkmenbashi! At last! I wake Fintan up and start shoving our things into the bags ready to race off the ship in a minute, Fintan is looking for his razor - shave!? Now?! In these crucial few minutes?! Of course, it took us about an hour and a half to get off the ship, so I had nothing to fret about really, I just wanted to get off the ferry and be in Tur...