Ancient Merv

You need to see this and it's on every Turkmenistan itinerary, however, I find the places near Mary nowhere near as good as Gonur which is further north through the desert. I was very disappointed with Merv before that spot. Then I noticed there are a few dozen spots as locations for the UNESCO property and the locals say UNESCO are stupid. Well basically the sites don't connect and weren't at the same time so you are combing them because of location only.

Gonur is a marvel though. It has hardly been excavated and will take a few more excavators to give their life like Victor did here. He spent over 40 years just exploring and digging, getting Turkmenistan citizenship in the meantime and being honest about it taking forever. "Don't excavate this building, I want to see the whole site first". Nowadays you can see the palace and surroundings but all houses outside of that are buried and you are basically stepping on them constantly. You will also step on pottery but it is apparently low quality stuff.

A trip to Gonur is usually only longet tours. It takes 2 hours from Mary just to reach it. There is also no road so it's desert sand roads almost all the way.

In off-season I was able to chat with the local staff a bit as they are still excavating in Spring and Autumn. They only speak Turkmen and Russia but the guide would help a lot. …

Gonur Depe and Merv belong to a very special country that I deeply recommend.

The site is composed of different and distant places which require small routes by car. It's a little bit special to see ruins of buildings dating of periods very different, that's probably why the site is laid out like this.

I remember the multitude of fragments of earthenware jars scattered on the ground, and above all the strange green vestiges of the old ovens.

My favourite building is on the joined picture, quite massive.

To finish, I met a black and white snake, so be careful ;)

I visited this WHS in June 2017. The inscribed areas include vast stretches of semi desert land stretching from a few kilometres away from modern Mary (the Archaelogical Site of Ancient Merv) to a very long day trip some 60km away from Merv on terrible roads to Togoluk and Gonur Tepe.

The Archaeological Site of Ancient Merv is made up of different sites (top photos) relatively close to each other and with roads and small parking areas near each site. On the other hand, the sites of Gonur Tepe and Togoluk contain the remains and impressive foundations of whole settlements on an area of around 55 hectares. Most remains in the Local History Museum of Mary and in the National Museum of Ashgabat came from the these two sites. Gonur Tepe is among the largest ruins in the Morghab delta region with over 150 ancient settlements dating to the early Bronze Age. Moreover, Buddhist remains were also found here (bottom left photo). If you have an extra day in Mary, go for this worthwhile day trip, otherwise just focus on the closer sites. Apparently the lead archaeologist has passed away and further excavations are at a standstill. It is a recurring theme in all Turkmenistan's WHS and you feel as if you're trespassing in an archaeological site which is still being excavated (hopefully!).

In the archaeological site of Ancient Merv, the main highlight for me was the 12th century Great Icehouse (bottom right photo) as I had never seen anything …

Merv is such an extensive site that I don't know how I would have visited it on my own. Probably hire a taxi and be transported from location to location. The thing about Merv is that it holds the archeological remains of 5 cities, built next to each other during different periods in time. There's a small museum near the entrance where a model of the total area can be seen, and how the different cities are positioned.

The first real sight in the park is the Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. It has been almost completely restored with the help of Turkish funds. This is the building that you will see in the distance over and over again from different corners of Merv park.

The next stop is at the "Forbidden City". These are just the remains of walls. We can go on / in it, without being limited to certain paths. Our obligatory Turkmen guide only is a bit worried about stray dogs (we didn't see any). On the ground lie lots of bits of coloured tiles. The Turkmen authorities haven't even begun proper excavations here.

The Erk-Kala is the oldest city ruin. Nowadays it is 'just' a large hill (somewhat like a tell?) on which you can climb and look out over the adjoining little oasis.

At Gyaur-Kala only some walls remain. Our attention here is mainly drawn by the resident camels that are roaming around in this part of the park.

Those travellers who have followed the Silk Road will have become used to restored cities – Bokhara, Samarkand and Khiva in Uzbekistan. And very fine they are too. But if you venture south to Turkmenistan and visit Merv it is a very different sort of experience.

This 100 square kilometre site contains the remains of at least 5 different cities dating from the 6th century BCE through Alexander the Great and the Persians to the Seljuk Turks. At which point it was totally destroyed by Jenghiz Khan in 1221. The newer cities were built alongside (rather than “over” which is the norm in most continually inhabited sites) the old and all used mud bricks. So what you see is a jumble of walls, earthworks and misshapen buildings as they succumb to the elements.

If you are there you must have overcome the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Turkmenbashi (“Father of the Turkmen”) to get a visa. Indeed you will already be totally overwhelmed by his cult of personality – the gold statues, the photos, the books, the carpets with his picture on, the marble palaces, even his gold monogram in the corner of every TV program as it spouts again the details of this magnificent cotton harvest or that world class factory.

So see Merv as an antidote – a reminder of temporal nature of states whatever their politics and whoever their leader! All will be dust one day.

If you have obtained a visa you will probably …