Must See Turkmenistan - Ashghabat

This small city nestled beneath the Kopet Dag, and just a few miles from Iran, has become a political statement built to the peculiar tastes of President Niyazov.

Once a marginalised, largely forgotten capital of a Soviet desert republic that few people had ever heard of, let alone visited, Ashgabat ('the city of love' or Ashkabad in Arabic) has undergone a dramatic transformation of the most unusual kind since independence.

Originally developed by the Russians in the late 19th century, Ashgabat became a prosperous, largely Russian frontier town on the Trans-Caspian railway. However, at 1am on 6 October 1948, the city vanished in less than a minute, levelled as it was by an earthquake that measured nine on the Richter scale. 110,000 people died and for five years the area was closed to outsiders while bodies were recovered and the wreckage cleared.