The Soviet fossils in Ashgabat are strewn over the surface of daily life here. One in particular is the bukhanka. This is the Russian word for “loaf”, as in “loaf of bread”. However, the word is used as a standard sort of measure of the state-subsidized and state-produced bread that fills a lot of stomachs here in the capital of the country with the second largest natural gas field in the world.

During the USSR, a bukhanka was a standard, one kilogram loaf of bread. Stuffed with starch, it was not great but it apparently sold for just kopeks (cents in a ruble). Cheap bread subsidized by the productive areas of the economy, and especially oil exports, was a cornerstone of the USSR’s policies towards the citizen.

Ashgabat’s residents try to catch the bread as it just gets delivered. It is pretty tolerable when fresh, straight from the factory. It is a completely different story just a few hours out of the oven. The crust is tough and chewy with burn marks at the points where the pan sat on the rack. The bread is stacked on a shelf, several deep, and everyone handles this with the same care you might show a shoe box.

It is not possible to blame the bad taste on the handling, though. The gray color of the bread stems from using the worst available flour. This shows itself in the taste and the only way I have been able to eat it was to either dipping in soup or salting each slice, salt having been one of the last corners to cut. And instead of a standard weight of one kilogram, the loaf is at least a third less. And yet, it gets taken off the shelf almost as fast as it is re-stocked by the bread truck’s bread boy.

The reason for the local tolerance to such a shabby product is the price. The state controls the production of the bread and charges a price of four loaves for one manat (which makes each loaf about eight US cents). Consumers come in and grab eight loaves at a time. Those with exact change and just buying the bukhanka effectively have a second check-out line where a flash of the loaves and some tossed coins is enough to walk out. Within an hour, this terrible tasting and poor quality bread is gone. The non-subsidized, but much better quality bread is between four and ten times more expensive. This is the kind I buy with my rich foreigner tastes.

This subsidy and the bread distribution system is a direct carry-over of the Soviet era. The state-owned trucks plying the streets, labeled simply in Turkmen, “Bread”. The state-owned grocery stores stocking the bread keep people satisfied and fed despite their low salaries. Paid for with foreign currency, the bukhanka will continue to fill the shelves and stomachs of a lot of people here in Ashgabat.

Read the first post in this series: Landing in Ashgabat

This is a standard government-owned bread truck. Green license plates are all government vehicles, so it is helpful in figuring out what the various state monopolies are. The 'ÇÖREK' written on the side of the truck (pronounced 'chorek') reads "Bread" in Turkmen language.

This post has been written by an expatriate currently working in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan visas are not for the faint of heart. With the exception of a few intrepid overlanders who take advantage of an oddly liberal three-day transit visa, getting into the country is not easy. Either one comes in a very expensive tourist visa package or one comes sponsored by an international business or organization. As a result, nearly everyone flies into the capital, Ashgabat, and gets the well-manicured drive from the airport into the city.

I came to Ashgabat in winter just a few days after a snowstorm blanketed this desert city. The snow and ice does not detract from the route into the city. The road is lined with pine trees which have been enthusiastically planted around the capital. They stay green all year and there is little cleaning up of leaves and debris required. These positives clearly were laid out in some bureaucrat’s memo to plant them in every available public space. Unfortunately, bureaucrats do not always communicate aesthetics well so the pines are planted in tree form formation, giving them an odd and artificial feel. I will admit that were very pretty with the snow laden boughs in January, though.

The main road from the airport to the center is lined with white marble clad buildings, all feeling out of place and out of proportion. Roads are built for a much greater traffic load than Ashgabatians currently have to worry about. The state-owned bus company has constructed stations on the main streets that are like mini-airport terminals, complete with indoor waiting areas and LED tickers listing the bus lines and the current temperature. This should make for an impressive display of what a centrally planned government can do with lots of foreign reserves and little check on executive power. However, the buses crammed full of people taking subsidized fares and the empty, unrented kiosks in each of these stations speak more to the economic realities here than do the vanity projects.

All this is fairly par for the course in terms of gas-rich authoritarian countries. Nothing too surprising, especially not when compared to the construction projects of the petro-states in the Middle East. What really took me back were the ice covered fountains at every intersection. In the depth of winter and in spite of six inches of snow on the ground, they were all spraying full blast with ice volcanoes building up around the spouts. Burst pipe risks or not, someone important decreed that the water will flow in this desert country.

This post has been written by an expatriate currently working in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. 

In all my travels, Turkmenistan has been, by far, the oddest place I’ve visited. Culturally, the Turkmens are “cousins” of the Uzbeks, and I found many similarities in the everyday lives and customs with their Central Asian neighbors. The languages are also similar, both routed in Turkish. These are not the reasons I found Turkmenistan odd. Those reasons have to do with the cult of personality surrounding the then-alive Saparmurat Niyazov—also known as Turkmenbashi, or Leader of Turkmens.

He had large golden statues built for himself, renamed the days of the week and months of the year, and placed himself on the national currency. He wrote a book called the Ruhnama, meant for the “spiritual guidance of the nation”. Because he felt that only the Ruhnama and the Koran were necessary for most Turkmen to read, he closed all libraries in the country outside of Ashgabat. In addition to that, he closed all hospitals around the county because he felt all who were ill should come to the capital for treatment. The list of outrageous decrees and laws continues, like outlawing the opera, ballet, and the circus in 2001.

The absurdity of empty multi-lane roads, new still-empty marble-covered high rises, and endless water fountains in an arid land were my lasting impressions of Ashgabat. I would be curious to see how and if the city has changed since I last visited in 2004, especially since the passing of Turkmenbashi.

Click through to my Flickr gallery to see additional photos of Ashgabat.

Text and photos by Stephen Bugno

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The Ruhnama

Government buildings in Ashgabat

Two monuments in Ashgabat

The large golden statue of Turkmenbashi, which I believe has been removed.

The monument to Lenin in Ashgabat

The Drama Theater in Ashgabat

In Honor of International Worker’s Day, here is one of the ubiquitous public mosaics that once adorned buildings and public spaces across the whole of the Soviet Union, many still remaining to this day. Although there has been a trend over the past decade or so to remove some of these monuments and other artistic relics of the Soviet Union, many still remain.

Here a farmer and an industrial worker stand proudly in the shadow of Lenin under the blazing orange sun of the central Asian steppe. This art appeared on the side of an apartment block in a village near Tekeli in southeastern Kazakhstan. I took the photo in 2004 as I made my way through Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

We took the road south out of At-Bashi immediately passing a huge animal bazaar. Our Kyrgyz driver carefully weaved his way through the cows and horses being led across the main road. We continued, overtaking huge 18-weelers full of Soviet scrap metal, lined up miles before the Torugart Pass border, the back way into China’s Xinjiang province.

We turned east onto a gravel road, passing plenty of yaks before reaching the Tash Rabat Caravansarai. There were a few yurts set up in the grass covered river valley and some horses for riding. The very well preserved stone structure of Tash Rabat is thought to be from the 15^th century, when Silk Road travelers used it as an inn.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno