Turkmenistan | Nohur | Kopet Dag Mountains

I was extremely eager to see the ruins of the city of Dehistan, 195 miles northwest of Ashgabat as the crow flies. The city was located on the old flood plain of the Amu Darya River back when the river flowed into the Caspian Sea and not the Aral Sea, as it now does. Dehistan was founded by the Khwarezmshahs who ruled the Khwarezmian Empire up until the early thirteenth century when Chingis Khan And His Boys invaded the region. The buildings and minarets found there, now in ruins, are probably the only examples of structures built under the direction of the last Khwarezmshah, Muhammad II. Now you can understand why I was so determined to visit the site. 

It is possible to drive to Dehistan directly from Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. The tourist agency from which I had hired a car and driver suggested, however, that I make a detour through the Kopet Dag Mountains and visit the small village of Nohur, where I would be able to spend the night with a local family. Although I was raring to go to Dehistan I thought that it might be interesting to get of glimpse of the Kopet Tag Mountains on the way and so agreed to the detour. 

The Kopet Dag Mountains rearing up along the southern border of Turkmenistan (click on photos for enlargements).

The Kopet Dag Mountains, which constitute the northern edge of the Iranian Plateau, run for some four hundred miles along the southern border of Turkmenistan. From Ashgabat we drove fifty-two miles west through the desert fronting the Kopet Dag to the town of Barharly and then turned southwest onto a gravel road which climbed into the mountains. Nohur is about twenty-four miles from Barhaly as the crow flies, at an attitude of 3100 feet, some 2650 feet above the desert immediately to the north. The Iranian border is just sixteen miles away to the south. 

 Climbing into the Kopet Dag Mountains. An apricot orchard can see seen in the bottom of the valley. 

The village of Nohur is inhabited by an ethnic group known by the same name, the Nohurs. According to one legend, perhaps apocryphal, the Nohurs are descended from the soldiers of the Greek adventurer and gadabout Alexander the Great. Whatever their origins, they are decidedly different from the usual Turkmen and speak a dialect incomprehensible to outsiders. They maintain their ethnic purity by marrying only within the group. Although known for their strict adherence to Islam, elements of animism and Zoroastrianism can be detected in their religious practices. They are also famous for their work ethnic and members of the group who have established businesses in Ashgabat and other cites have achieved considerable wealth and power.

One of the most unusual features of the town of Nohur is the local cemetery. Almost all grave markers are topped by the horns of mountain sheep and ibex collected by local hunters.

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

 Nohur Cemetery

Nohur is also known for its silk weaving. The silk itself is imported from Iran and hand-woven using traditional local designs. 

 Silk Weaver. As can be seen, the woman has a scarf over her mouth. Nohur women traditionally wear a scarf over their mouths “so that they will not say silly things,” at least according to local lore. 

Silk Weaver

The house where I spent the night. The owners were a man and woman in their sixties. They had a daughter with a small baby who was the apple of everyone’s eye. The woman made a mean mutton plov. They also had wonderful local butter, honey, and cherry juice.

 Plateau west of Nohur

Plateau west of Nohur

Ramparts at the edge of the plateau

Village at the base of the ramparts. This village had wonderful honey for sale.

Two silk hangings I bought in Nohur, now in the Galleria of my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi. The painting is by the father of Mongolian Artist Mönkhtsetseg.

Turkmenistan | Tagtabazar | Yekedeshik Cave Complex | Part 2

The Yekedeshik Cave Complex is located high above the east bank of Murghab River about fourteen miles north of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan border. “Yekedeshik” is supposedly an archaic Turkish word meaning “single orifice”. The name refers to the single entrance to entire complex. There are five floors to the complex, although only the top two are now open to the public. The entrance opens into the fourth floor. The fourth and fifth floor contain forty-four rooms, so it is probable that the entire complex has well over 100 rooms. The chambers were carved out of soft sandstone with what were apparently pick-like implements. 

The really surprisingly thing about the complex is how little is know about who built it, for what purpose, and when. Almost everything said about the caves is speculation. Legends and tall tales abound of course. One legend maintains that the caves are not of human provenance at all, but were instead created by jinns, which according to Arab and Muslim mythology are spirits of a lower rank than angels who can appear in both human and animal form. Another legend maintains that the caves were built and used as living quarters by the troops of the Greek adventurer Alexander the Great when they passed through this region in the fourth century B.C. According to this variant, the original caves were once thirty miles long and the current caves are just remnants of a much larger complex. Also according to this legend, the caves extended far into what is now Afghanistan and were later used for smuggling. 

Russian scholars who have studied the complex have opined that it was once a monastery, but even they hesitate to say whether it hosted Buddhists or Christians. Both Buddhism and Christianity were practiced in this area prior to the arrivals of Arabic Muslim invaders in the 650s A.D. Remnants of a Buddhist monastery can still be seen amidst of the ruins of ancient Merv 125 miles north of here, and there are many remains of Buddhist culture in Afghanistan just to to the south. Buddhism may have been in decline by the time the Arabs arrived, and what Buddhists did remain were probably stamped out, since they were viewed as idolators. Christians, on the other hand, were, like Muslims, “People of the Book” and thus tolerated by the Arab invaders. Indeed, from 553 A.D. to the eleventh century, some four hundred years after the arrival of Islam, Merv was a headquarters of the Nestorian Christian Church, sometimes called the Church of the East. A Nestorian college or seminary was operating in Merv as late as 1340. 

There is of course the possibility that the complex was first a Buddhist Monastery and later converted into a Christian monastery after Buddhism was stamped out. It is also not outside the realm of possibility that it once housed some heretical Islamic sect. No one has offered an opinion on when it was abandoned. Local people no doubt knew about the caves after they were no longer inhabited, but the complex did not come to the attention of the scholarly world until the early twentieth century when Turkmenistan became part of the Soviet Union.

The single entrance to the five-floor complex; hence the name “Yekedeshik”—One Orifice

Floor plan of the complex open to the public

The main gallery of the complex is about 120 feet long. Rooms are on either side.

A typical room in the complex

The rooms were apparently excavated with pick-like tools. The pick marks can clearly be seen here. 

Another room in the complex. The graffiti is modern.

Room with what could conceivable be an altar at one end

Linked rooms

Another view of linked rooms

Another view of linked rooms

Another view of linked rooms with curious wall concavities in the foreground

Curious wall concavities. It is tempting to think they were meditation chambers, but there is really no evidence for this. 

Vertical holes in the floor. The caretaker maintains they were used to store grain, flour, oil, honey, and other foodstuffs. Conceivably they could have also been used to store water. 

Another view of the vertical holes

Indentations in the floor. It is not clear what purpose they served. 

Portal linking two rooms and a storage hole

Stairway to a second floor room

Second floor room and stairway. This room also has an altar-like construction at one end.

A second floor room

Turkmenistan | Tagtabazar | Yekedeshik Cave Complex | Part 1

Wandered by the Yekedeshik Cave Complex located 290 miles as the crow flies southeast of Ashgabat. To get there from Ashgabat you have to drive 230 miles to Baramaly, the nearest town to the ruins of ancient Merv, and then drive south 120 miles to Tagtabazar, the nearest town to the caves. The actual driving distance is well over 300 miles. From Baramaly the road follows roughly the valley of the Murghab River, which begins on a plateau located between the Band-i Turkestan, Gharjistan, and Paropamisus mountains in what is now Afghanistan. From its source the Murghab flows north approximately 510 miles before disappearing into the sands of the Kara Kum Desert. As we shall have ample opportunities to see, the Murghab Valley vies with Egypt and Mesopotamia as the home of one of the world’s oldest civilizations.

South of Barmamaly a new highway is under construction and the temporary dirt roads are clogged with trucks, tankers, and buses bound for the natural gas processing plants which lie off in the desert to the right. Companies from Russia, India, Turkey, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia have all built plants here. It is the natural gas processed in these and other plants that have paid for the Expanses of White Marble in Ashgabat. After about fifty miles we past through the industrial zone and traffic thins out considerably. Although the Murghab Valley south of Baramaly is flanked on both sides by desert, the valley bottom itself is quite fertile. This land has been cultivated for at the very least the last 4000 years. In early May extensive fields of winter wheat lining the road are just starting to take on a hint of yellow. Numerous towns and villages lie along the river to the left. 

We pass through one of the ubiquitous police posts where my papers are checked and then just before Tagtabazar are stopped at a border zone checkpoint where my permit to travel in a restricted border area is perused. The Afghan border is, after all, just fourteen miles away. Although the Yekedeshik Caves are not quite on the well-trodden tourism path in Turkmenistan a trickle of visitors from other countries do come here and the border authorities are used to dealing with them. It takes the officials only twenty minutes to determine that my papers are in order. 

There appears to be little of interest in the small town of Tagtabazar itself. We cross the bridge over the Murghab and turn off on the dirt road which climbs the high bluffs to the east of the river. The river bottom is at an elevation of roughly 1120 feet. The entrance to the caves is in the side of the bluffs about 350 vertical feet about the river bottom. 

The Murghab River fourteen miles downstream from the Afghanistan border (click on photos for enlargements)

The entrance to the Yekedeshik Cave Complex, roughly 350 vertical feet above the valley bottom of the Murghab River, can just be seen near the center of this photo. 

The entrance to the Yekedeshik Cave Complex with the valley of the Murghab River stretching off to the south. 

The valley of the Murghab River. Although flanked by desert, the valley bottom itself is heavily cultivated.

Entrance to the Yekedeshik Cave Complex

Turkmenistan | Dehistan

After our Visit To Nohur we continued west across the plateau of the Kopet Dag Mountains, finally dropping back down to the desert near the village of Kruzde. 

Village of Kruzde (click on photos for enlargements). 

Continuing on the main road west through the desert fronting the Kopet Dag Mountains we eventually arrived at a tiny town called Garaagas where we pulled into a truck-stop for lunch. If the old American saw that lots of tractor-trailer trucks in front of a diner indicated good food it looked like we were in for a treat. There were nine trucks, all but one with Iranian plates, in the parking lot. The Iranian border was less than five miles away, although the actual border crossing was about forty miles to the west. This may be the first truck stop in Turkmenistan after crossing the border. Actually there were only two drivers in the diner. The rest were apparently sleeping in their trucks. There were two tables with chairs and two low tables on platforms equipped with pillows so you could stretch out and relax while you ate. The cook, a saucy looking woman in her twenties, took your order at a window opening into the kitchen. She must take a lot of guff from the clientele in a place like this, but she appeared fully capable of taking care of herself. She announced that the only thing on the menu was fish, fried. It seemed a bit odd to have fish out here in the middle of the desert, but my driver reminded me that we were only about seventy-five miles from the Caspian Sea. He assured me the fish was fresh and had never been frozen. The fish were probably dropped off here every couple days by dealers plying the highway between the sea and Ashgabat. With the fish we had cabbage slaw, fresh naan (flat bread), and green tea. The fish was white, flaky, not too bony, and delicious. The tea wasn’t fit to slop down hogs (perhaps in part because of the local water) but hey, this was a truck stop. The truckers, I noticed, were drinking Nescafe, probably for its more pronounced caffein buzz (it also disguises the taste of bad water better than tea).  

Just beyond Garaagas we turned off on a gravel road and headed west-northwest through the desert. Soon we stopped. It was time for my driver’s afternoon prayers. Rolling his prayer mat out on the sand, he performed the appropriate prostrations and orisons while I examined the flora of the desert. 

Flora of the desert. Unfortunately my driver did not know the name of this interesting plant. 

My driver reminded me in both appearance and demeanor of a Turkish David Puddy, Elaine’s on-again-off-again boyfriend on the old Seinfeld comedy show. He seemed calm and unflappable but with a sometimes eerie sense of detachment. For someone who had worked extensively with tourists like myself he knew very little English, only a few words in fact. We communicated entirely in Russian. In our time together he never made the slightest attempt to initiate a conversation, which was reason enough to like the guy. That we could drive for hours without exchanging a word was probably even a bigger relief to me than it was to him. In any case he was an excellent driver, and I had no reason to complain about anything. 

After thirty miles we came to the bleak and isolated village of Madau. Sand dunes loomed on all sides and there was not a stick of vegetation around any of the single-story abode houses. The sandy streets were completely deserted. Apparently everyone was indoors. I asked my driver what people here did for a living and he answered laconically with one word: “Gas.” Beyond Madau we veered northward and after about fourteen miles I spied two minarets looming on the horizon. These signaled that we were approaching Dehistan. 

Minarets and ruins of Dehistan looming in the distance

Map depicting the caravan route from Gorgan to Khwarezm via Dehistan

Located on a major caravan route running from Gurgan in what is now Iran to Urgench on the Amu Darya River, Dehistan was the main city of western Turkmenistan from the 10th to 14th centuries. It flourished especially during the reign of the Khwarezmshahs, who ruled Khwarezmia from the 1150s to 1220. 

The walls of Dehistan. The walled city measured 4200 feet long on the southeast side, 2200 long on the northeast side, 4860 feet long on the western side, and 2620 feet long on the southwest side.

The closest tourist facilities to the ruins were probably eighty-seven miles to the north in the town of Balkanabat. We had brought tents and were prepared to camp out on site, but the caretaker of the ruins, who lives with his wife about half a mile away, agreed to let me sleep in a spare room in his house. His wife made us omelets using fresh eggs from the hens pecking around aside the house. They also had the best fermented camel milk I have had outside of Mongolia.

Another view of the ruins from outside the city walls

Ruins of a portal to a mosque and a minaret built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II (r. 1200–1200). Khwarezmshah Muhammad II was ruling Khwarezm when Chingis Khan Invaded Khwarezmia.  

Ruins of a portal to a mosque and a minaret built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

Ruins of a portal to a mosque built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

Ruins of a portal to a mosque built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

Ruins of a portal to a mosque built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

Ruins of a portal to a mosque built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

Ruins of a portal to a mosque built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

Ruins of a portal to a mosque built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

Ruins of a portal to a mosque and a minaret built by Khwarezmshah Muhammad II

The minaret of Khwarezmshah Muhammad II 

Minaret of Khwarezmshah Muhammad II in the foreground and another minaret built by Abu Bini Ziyard in 1004 A.D in the background

Minaret built by Abu Bini Ziyard in 1004 A.D

Minaret built by Abu Bini Ziyard in 1004 A.D

Restored foundations of buildings within the walled city

Restored foundations of buildings within the walled city

Restored foundations of buildings within the walled city

Restored foundations of buildings within the walled city

Original paving stones from the old city

The double wall around the city

The double wall around the city

Ruins of a tower in the city wall

The double wall around the city

The double wall around the city

Denizen of the ruins

Dehistan was apparently invested and sacked by the Mongols when they moved through Khorasan in 1221. The details of this campaign are sparse, but perhaps Chingis Khan’s youngest son Tolui, or a raiding party sent by him, took the city after he had captured Merv. The city recovered, but was abandoned in the 15th century, apparently after the water table dried up, leaving it high and dry in the middle of the desert.