(instrumental music)
- Ashgabat, the city of love, in Arabic.
It's been called Las Vegas meets North Korea.
It's also been called City of the Dead.
We had ourselves asking over and over again,
where are all the people?
The city from the future, just with no people.
- There's no people!
- No one.
The city's empty.
- Where are all the people?
- [Mike] I teamed up with a friend, Lexie Alford.
Together we decided to tackle one of the least-visited
countries in the world.
Let's paint the metaphorical landscape
of this location with some questions.
Language?
Russian, and a splattering of Turkmen.
In 1991, the Soviet Union fell,
breaking the USSR into 15 separate nations.
One of these being the glorious nation of Turkmenistan.
(exciting music) (fireworks exploding)
Here our irreverent and supreme merciful leader Turkmenbashi
took the seat of power, naming himself president for life.
He had some rules, however.
No opera, it's too noisy.
No makeup on television, and no dogs.
He made dogs illegal in the capital city of Ashgabat
because of their unappealing odor.
His obsessions?
Himself, horses, and the star,
symbolizing the eight gates of paradise in Islam.
It's everywhere.
I mean it.
Eight-pointed star.
He died in 2006 and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov
took his place.
Immensely unstable dictator and a musician.
(singing)
- Cranking the insanity of this country down,
but only about 10%.
Now it's his face that's everywhere.
Is the country safe?
For tourists, yeah, if you follow the rules.
To speak your mind?
Definitely not.
Social media, blocked.
Google search, blocked.
Even my VPN didn't work.
I had never seen that happen before.
There's no freedom of the press,
no freedom to say what's on your mind.
It's a police state and big brother is always watching.
It's one of the most isolated
and repressive regimes on the planet.
It rivals North Korea.
It's just a bit flashier.
It's got the fourth largest natural gas reserves
in the world, though much of the country
is still impoverished.
Is Turkmenistan expensive?
The currency is the manat,
worth about 3.5 manat to one US dollar from an ATM.
From the black market, it's 13 manat to one US dollar,
making this country simultaneously one of the most expensive
and cheapest destinations I've ever visited.
So what was our first day like in Ashgabat,
one of the strangest cities in the world?
Well, it started with a drive.
(intense music)
Sometimes I come to countries,
very rarely I come to countries
where I don't really understand how,
or even why,
some things exist.
But here in Ashgabat,
I'm asking those questions.
We're the only tourists here.
There's a bunch of ladies dressed in blue
who are gardening and cleaning.
(ladies laughing)
(Mike laughs)
Little camera shy.
And us and our guide.
The overall impression so far has been
just astonishment, if I can think of a word.
This is an incredibly beautiful city.
But so far everything seems quite empty.
First impressions?
- This place is quite strange.
(laughs)
This is not what I was expecting at all.
- [Mike] What'd you expect?
- Well I wasn't expecting so many gold
statues and pillars and--
This is weird.
- But wait, who's that
on top of the Arch of Neutrality?
It's a gold statue of Turkmenbashi,
constantly rotating to face the sun.
That's a little bit extra.
Everything seemed a little bit over the top.
We learned later that Ashgabat was awarded
the world record for highest density
of marble-clad buildings.
It seemed like the entire city was built on world records.
Let's pull up Guinness for a second.
Largest architectural star, most pools in a public place,
highest density of marble-clad buildings,
largest indoor Ferris wheel.
After trying to digest all of this lunacy,
we were pretty hungry.
We wanted something local.
Ooh!
It smells good.
What is this?
- Chal.
- [Mike] Chal, which is?
- Camel's milk.
- [Mike] Camel's?
Fermented?
Fermented camel's milk.
Thank you very much.
And we put some salt in?
- [Bat] Yes.
- [Mike] All right.
Can you just do mine too?
What does the salt do?
- [Bat] Make it salty, salting it.
(traditional music)
- [Mike] All right, Bat, give me a tutorial here.
So we have a bowl of plov.
On top we have a hot pepper, we've got a--
- [Bat] That's garlic.
- [Mike] Some garlic, and what else is in there?
- Rice, carrot, and meat.
- Plov.
We heard about it in Uzbekistan.
We're trying it here in Turkmenistan.
Step one is dump it on the plate.
(Bat mumbles)
- Step two, hot pepper on top.
Step three, enjoy.
This, friends and family at home,
is a giant probably two-liter jug
of fermented camel milk called chal.
Which actually we have some here.
It kinda tastes like if you took cottage cheese,
like the water that's in cottage cheese,
and one of those DIY carbonated water machines,
you know what I mean, you put the bottle in
and you make it at home?
(laughs)
But it's fermented so there's like 1% alcohol in there.
And it tastes very much like cheesy yogury.
They say-- - You drank like
a whole cup.
- I actually don't mind it.
The first sip's a little bit strange
but it's actually pretty tasty.
The flavor difference between these two things is amazing.
So the plov tastes like, like grandma's home cooking.
I'm a big garlic fan and there's huge chunks
of garlic in there.
Such a hearty taste.
There's some fat and some oils, garlic,
and some salt and some onions,
everything's stirred in a giant pot
and they have some, some beef or is it--
- It's beef. - It's beef on top?
It's the kinda food that after a hard day at work
or just want a warm hug, this food gives you exactly that.
It's amazing.
Our last stop of the day was visiting a place
called the Wedding Palace of Happiness to see the skyline.
We didn't know what it was, but it sounded ridiculous,
much like the rest of the day, so we left.
(instrumental music)
- Welcome to the Wedding Palace of Happiness.
- [Mike] That's where we are.
- Aw, come on! - Listen, this place
is incredible.
This, it's built and used for people to get married,
to have wedding parties, to stay after their wedding
and it's probably one of the most incredible buildings
I've ever seen in my entire life.
We're up here because it also has a beautiful view
of Ashgabat, and if you've seen a little bit of today,
(laughs)
you know that there's a lot to see in Ashgabat.
So up on this hill you can see all of the buildings.
And all of the buildings are lit up
with a variety of beautiful lights and colors.
Take a look at this.
So earlier today we drove around
and we saw a lot of these beautiful little points of light.
These are actually mostly apartments here all lit up.
And if you go look way over here, this little pink circle,
that is the Ferris wheel, largest indoor Ferris wheel,
and this is the TV tower which we can unfortunately
cannot get to, it's closed to the public.
But they said it was the--
It holds the Guinness World Record
for largest star-shaped building?
Something like that?
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
(Mike laughs)
(speaks foreign language)
(Mike speaks foreign language)
(speaks foreign language)
(speaks foreign language) (speaks foreign language)
(Mike laughs)
- Tourists? - Tourists, yeah, tourists.
Hey, it's Mike Corey of Fearless and Far
and one of the main reason we went to Turkmenistan
to begin with was to roast marshmallows
over the door to hell.
(instrumental music)
That's coming up soon, but coming up next
that I'm editing right now is riding
the world's largest indoor Ferris wheel in Ashgabat.
Here we go.
Private.
Tour for two please.
Turkmenistan was easily one of the weirdest
but also one of the coolest trips I did in the entire year.
If you wanna go as well there's a link
in the description for the tour operator that took us there.
I've been doing this job for about 10 years
and I like to specialize
in the more extreme, abstract locations.
If you're also interested,
I made an advanced travel tips video
that you can get for free
by going to the link in the annotation
or in the description below.
Type in your email, (whistles) straight to your inbox.
As well, if you wanna see more of what happened
behind the scenes in Turkmenistan,
I can't post everything on my YouTube channel
because it's a little bit incriminating
for the people involved.
I've posted all the behind the scenes fun, extra,
too raw for YouTube or too incriminating for YouTube stuff
on my Pateron page.
It's a brand new video I posted
of Turkmenistan just right now.
Chase your fears, dragons, and I'll catch you
in the next episode of the Turkmenistan series,
riding the world's largest indoor Ferris wheel in Ashgabat.
See you.
(instrumental music)