Ashgabat

Ashgabat is the strangest capital the Guide has charted: a city of white marble — more of it than anywhere on Earth, the record is certified — rising between the black-sand Karakum and the Kopet Dag mountains, with golden statues, synchronized fountains in a desert, and avenues that gleam and echo. It is sincere in its strangeness: rebuilt after a terrible earthquake in 1948, the city chose splendor as its answer, and polishes it daily.

The traveller who goes — almost always on a guided visa, with a licensed operator and a letter of invitation — sees the marble at dusk when it turns rose, hunts carpet guls at the Altyn Asyr bazaar where the national art is sold by the square meter, walks the Parthian clay of old Nisa where this land was a kingdom two thousand years before the marble, and takes the great excursion north: Darvaza, the crater in the Karakum that has burned since 1971, a campfire the size of a plaza under all the stars the desert owns.

The Guide's honesty, gently: Turkmenistan's doors are the narrowest in the region — transit and tour visas shift by season, and the prudent traveller confirms conditions with a licensed operator and their own chancellery before sailing; photography of official buildings is restricted: ask before framing; and the quiet in the streets is real, as is the courtesy of the people you meet in it. The Guide keeps this strange white harbor on the map, and its page ready.