Travel in Turkmenistan: a visa for nearly every visitor

How visitors get in

Every traveller needs a visa except, according to the airline database Timatic as quoted by the Central Asia travel guide Caravanistan, citizens of Georgia, who may stay up to 90 days in any 180. Two kinds of visa matter to visitors. A tourist visa requires a letter of invitation, and the embassy in Kuala Lumpur tells applicants who are not visiting anyone in the country to contact a Turkmen travel agency; Caravanistan states plainly that a tourist visa is not possible without booking a tour. A traveller on a tourist visa moves with a guide, usually in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, sometimes taking a domestic flight or train for the longer distances.

The transit visa needs no tour. It is issued for three to seven days, five being usual, and it requires the holder to cross from one country to another, so it cannot be used to return to the country the traveller came from. According to Caravanistan, about half of transit applications were refused at random between 2015 and 2018, the borders were closed until March 2023, and since February 2024 transit visas have again been issued at several embassies in the region, with each embassy setting its own practice. The embassy's own list of requirements includes a passport valid for at least six months after departure, a letter of invitation certified by the State Migration Service, and, for stays of three months or more, an HIV certificate issued in the previous three months. Visas are issued within ten calendar days and the fee is paid in US dollars in cash. Crossing points must be named on the application.

Which ancient sites draw visitors

Turkmenistan has three cultural sites on the World Heritage List, and the government says all three have long been favoured by foreign visitors.

Ancient Merv, inscribed in 1999, lies beside the modern city of Mary. UNESCO describes it as the oldest and best preserved of the Silk Road oasis cities in Central Asia, an archaeological park of 353 hectares whose remains cover 4,000 years: Bronze Age centres such as Gonur, the walled cities of Erk Kala and Gyaur Kala, and the medieval city of Sultan Kala with the 12th-century mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. The walls of Sultan Kala and its citadel run for 12 kilometres and record military building from the 11th to the 13th centuries. Caravanistan calls Merv the most important site in the country and pairs it with the Bronze Age site of Gonur Depe.

Nisa, inscribed in 2007, is two mounds, Old and New Nisa, at Bagyr, about 18 kilometres south-west of central Ashgabat. They mark one of the early cities of the Parthian Empire, and excavations have uncovered decorated buildings with domestic, state and religious uses. Kunya-Urgench, inscribed in 2005, stands on the left bank of the Amu Darya in Daşoguz Province, in a town of about 30,000 people. Its monuments date mainly from the 11th to the 16th centuries and include a mosque, the gates of a caravanserai, mausoleums and a minaret 60 metres high. UNESCO notes that its holy places are popular with pilgrims, and Caravanistan reports that the town is known locally as the Mecca of Turkmenistan.

What Ashgabat looks like

Ashgabat was founded as a Russian garrison in 1881, destroyed by the earthquake of 1948 and rebuilt after independence under Niyazov's "White City" programme, which sheathed monumental buildings in white marble. In 2013 the Guinness Book of Records recorded the city's concentration of white marble buildings. The government lists further Guinness entries: the flagpole outside the National Museum, the Oguzhan sculpture at the entrance to the airport, the star on the broadcasting centre and the enclosed Ferris wheel of the Älem entertainment centre.

The city is also a gallery of state symbols. Since independence monuments have been raised to neutrality, to the constitution, to independence and to the Ruhnama, and in May 2024 a statue of the poet Magtymguly, 60 metres high on a 20-metre pedestal, was unveiled at the foot of the Kopet Dag. Under Niyazov most streets were given numbers in place of names; after his death in 2006 Soviet-era names were restored, and many have since been replaced with the names of Turkmen poets, scholars and heroes. Caravanistan describes the older Soviet town as leafy and lively beside the new monuments.

Ashgabat has the only airport with regular international passenger flights, and the state carrier, Turkmenistan Airlines, has flown from it to cities in Russia, Turkey, the Gulf, South and East Asia, Europe and Central Asia. Nisa is close by, and Caravanistan also points visitors to the Kipchak mosque nearby.

Why the Darvaza crater is dimming

The best known sight outside the cities is the Darvaza gas crater, officially the Shining of Karakum and known to visitors as the Door to Hell. It lies near the village of Darvaza about 260 kilometres north of Ashgabat, roughly four hours by road, and measures 60 to 70 metres across and about 30 metres deep.

How it started is not settled. One account has Soviet geologists drilling into a gas-filled cavern in 1971, the ground collapsing under the rig and the gas being set alight in the expectation that it would burn off in days; some local geologists say the collapse happened in the 1960s and the fire was lit only in the 1980s. The explorer George Kourounis, who in 2013 became the first person to reach the bottom of the crater, concluded that nobody actually knew.

The fire is now going out. In January 2022 the government ordered it extinguished, citing health, the environment and the gas industry. In 2025 it reported that the fire had shrunk to a third of its size, while wells were drilled around the crater to capture the methane, and by August only a few pockets of flame remained. The monitoring company Capterio reported that the heat had fallen by more than 75% over three years, and data from the nonprofit Carbon Mapper show the crater releasing an average of about 1,300 kilograms of methane an hour between 2022 and 2025. The area was declared a nature reserve in 2013, and a rough unsigned track leads to the rim, where yurts have been set up for overnight stays.

Where the routes run

Caravanistan estimates that 95% of travellers cross the country on a single route, between Mashhad in Iran and Khiva or Nukus in Uzbekistan. It runs through Ashgabat, north across the Karakum to Darvaza and on to Kunya-Urgench, and fits into three days. Travellers who arrive by the Caspian ferry at Türkmenbaşy usually drive east to Ashgabat and join it, and those who come for archaeology go east instead, through Mary to Merv and Gonur and on to Türkmenabat and Bukhara.

Inside the country the main road is the M37, which links the port of Türkmenbaşy with the border crossing at Farap by way of Ashgabat, Mary and Türkmenabat, and the main north to south road runs from Ashgabat to Daşoguz. The railway carries domestic passengers only. For travellers on a transit visa without a car of their own, Caravanistan lists the train, shared taxis, minibuses and some buses, and reports that roads are generally good.

How to move around inside the country

Domestic flights link five cities. Turkmenistan Airlines, the only Turkmen carrier, flies scheduled services from Ashgabat to Daşoguz, Mary, Türkmenabat and Türkmenbaşy; a new international airport opened at Türkmenabat in February 2018 and another at Kerki in June 2021. In 2019 the airline carried 2.5 million passengers.

The railway is older than the capital. The first line was laid in 1880 from the Caspian shore to Mollagara as part of the Russian Trans-Caspian Railway, reached Çärjew, now Türkmenabat, in 1886 and crossed the Amu Darya on a wooden bridge in 1887. Today's state railway, Türkmendemirýollary, runs domestic passenger trains between the main cities and handled 5.44 million passengers in 2019; foreign groups can travel by special trains run by tour operators. A toll motorway between Ashgabat and Türkmenabat is under construction.

The Caspian ferry is another way in. Since 1962 a passenger ferry has sailed between Türkmenbaşy and Baku in Azerbaijan, and the port rebuilt in 2018 was designed for 300,000 passengers and 75,000 vehicles a year. Caravanistan reports that Azerbaijani customs again let passengers board with the emailed visa code in place of a visa in the passport.

When the calendar makes a difference

Public holidays affect when a visa can be had. Caravanistan advises that transit visa applications are likeliest to be refused in the week or so around Independence Day on 27 September, and that consulates tend to close for long holidays early in May, around New Year and around Nowruz in March. National holidays are marked with mass choreographed events, and the Day of the Turkmen Horse in April and Carpet Day in May are among the days built around the country's own symbols.

What lies off the main route

The Caspian resort of Avaza was presented in June 2007 and building began at the end of that year on 5,000 hectares set aside near Türkmenbaşy. The government counts 18 hotels and room for more than 10,000 holidaymakers at a time, with parks, a 7-kilometre artificial river and an aquapark opened in July 2018. Caravanistan describes it as busy with Turkmen families in summer and expensive for foreigners.

Further from the cities, tours reach landscapes the government lists among its more than 200 hiking routes. Nokhur, a village at the foot of the Kopet Dag on the border with Iran, takes guests in homestays. Caravanistan also lists pistachio forests, mud volcanoes and an underground lake among the landscapes that tours reach. Yangykala Canyon is a long drive across the desert. In the far east the Kugitang range holds dinosaur footprints, caves and sulphur springs inside the Koytendag State Nature Reserve, which UNESCO placed on the tentative list in 2025. The spa towns of Mollagara, Bayramaly, Ýylysuw and Archman offer medical holidays in sanatoria.

The climate shapes the season. Summers from May to September are long and hot, with readings above 50 °C recorded in the eastern Karakum, and most of the year's little rain falls between January and May. The geography article describes the land these routes cross.

How tourism is organised

Tourism is regulated by the state, through the Tourism Committee of Turkmenistan, and the government's account names the Ministry of Culture as the body charged with promoting foreign tourism. Visitor numbers have stayed small: about 9,000 foreign tourists in 2016 and 14,438 in 2019. The Tourism in Turkmenistan article attributes this to the restrictive visa regime, and the main Turkmenistan article notes that international tourism has not grown significantly despite the Avaza zone.

Caravanistan reports that the government sets a separate price regime for travellers on tourist visas, so that the cost of a visit depends above all on which visa the traveller holds.