My love of horses has taken me to many different places to see particular breeds: Dartmoor, Exmoor, Connemara, Iceland, Mongolia, the Camargue. Though nowhere has been as memorable as Turkmenistan. Incredibly isolationist, having just loosened some of its visa regulations for tourists in the last year and with strict travel restrictions on its own citizens, most people had never even heard of it when I told them where I was going. I went to see the golden horses, the Akhal-Tekes, a breed that is thought to be one of the founders of the Thoroughbred, through a sire from the 17th century known as “the Byerly Turk”.
The Akhal-Teke is a state symbol, and you see images of it everywhere—in grocery stores, on government buildings and on the carpets for which the nation is famous. The stallions are not allowed to be gelded, presumably because it would be neutering the power and majesty of the state in some way, and all the horses are registered with the Ministry of Horses. They cannot be put down without permission. The Ministry of Horses was one of many buildings that surprised me, having many storeys and flashing with gaudy colours at night. I had been prepared for the remnants of Soviet architecture such as I saw in Mongolia, but not for the Asian futurism that I found in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat, with some buildings shaped like giant teeth and many others pulsating with rainbow lights. I remember thinking: “In any other country, these would be gay bars.”
The countryside is beautiful and largely flat, with sand dunes, scrub and plains, verdant irrigated fields, that are perfect for galloping. Green overwhelms; in the grass, the rooftops, the dresses women wear, the decorative accents in the interior of the airport and the garnish of the gates. The dogs reminded me of those I saw in Georgia, fluffy mountain dogs bred to shepherd flocks of sheep and goats, some looking more like lumbering bears with their cropped tails. In some of the tiny villages we rode through, nestled beneath the Kopet Dag mountains that divide Turkmenistan from Iran, there were gated new builds that reminded me of some I saw in similar circumstances in Fiji, where people have obviously made money elsewhere and brought it back to where they’re originally from, signs of affluence next to much more humble dwellings.
The exchange rate is inflated (the local currency, the manat, is worth far less on the black market than it is in a bank) and so perhaps is the official population—it is certainly small enough that the Turkmen greet each other when getting on the plane. The 1948 earthquake still looms large in the consciousness of the country, when possibly as much as 10 per cent of the population was wiped out. Women wear bright long dresses, long hair and very often patterned scarves, whereas schoolboys dress like 1980s businessmen with black suits and matching briefcases. Many older people I saw had mouths full of gold; I didn’t ask if that was for durability or storing wealth—or both.
As a tourist, you’re not allowed to travel without a tour guide and can only stay in hotels approved for foreigners. You are absolutely not allowed in private residences. These are all attempts to control the narrative and limit your view of the country and its people—you’re exclusively meant to see its most luxurious side. Natural interactions inevitably seep through, though, as people are so unused to foreigners that they approach you to ask questions and take photos. They are equally as curious about you as they are touched that you would want to visit their country, imploring you to come back.
You do, of course, have to parse the hagiography in what you are told, but to me that was no more constructed than America’s mythology, supposed land of the free in which many are deprived of freedom and into which many more can’t even enter. The internet is heavily restricted, though locals (in metropolitan areas at least) circumvent this with VPNs and Starlink, both technically illegal. The outside world encroaches, in every TikTok and Instagram reel and person like me who is grateful to have had the chance to visit.
