One of the world’s most isolated countries, this former Soviet state is showing signs it’s ready for more tourists

Cars move through the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat on March 10, 2025. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

When the Turkmenistan government announced new streamlined visa regulations in April, people familiar with travelling to the Central Asian nation were unsure what to make of it.

Not that there are many such experts — along with North Korea and Eritrea, Turkmenistan has long been considered one of the globe’s most isolated countries, a legacy that dates to the 1990s when the nation broke away from the disintegrating Soviet Union and turned inward, settling into a sealed-off, independent authoritarianism.

For certain travelers, though, especially those who gravitate toward conflict zones and geopolitical oddities, Turkmenistan’s impenetrability has given it an alluring mystique. There’s just one problem: getting in.

Scoring a tourist visa is a long and involved process that requires obtaining a Letter of Introduction (LOI) from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after booking your visit with a government-approved tour operator. The vetting — the government decides if you should be allowed to enter — can sometimes take months.

Word that the regime intended to make things more user-friendly for travelers, then, was startling, says Dylan Lupine, whose U.K.-based Lupine Travel offers small-group Turkmenistan tours.

“We are still in the dark about it, as are our local partners in Turkmenistan, as there have been no updates since,” Lupine says. “The new visa regulations haven’t yet come into place and there’s no news of when this will be happening.”

If and when the new process kicks off, visitors would be able to apply online, with officials pledging that it will be much faster and result in fewer rejections. The LOI requirement will reportedly vanish, but visitors will still need a “sponsor” in Turkmenistan, which in most cases means signing up for a guided tour.

“Once it does come into place, I do think it will strongly boost visitor numbers,” Lupine adds.

CNN has reached out to Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.

Beyond the ‘Gates of Hell’

For decades — even before independence from the USSR — Turkmenistan’s main attraction has been the Darvaza Gas Crater. Located in the Karakum Desert about a four-hour drive from capital city Ashgabat, the huge fiery pit is a manmade phenomenon, created during the Soviet era when a natural gas exploration rig collapsed into a sinkhole.

After traveling across the desert in 4x4 caravans, visitors check into yurt camps and make their way to the edge of the rim around the “Gates of Hell” after dark to feel the heat and listen to the sizzle of the flames licking up from the bottom.

However, Darvaza is literally running out of gas. In recent years, the flames have noticeably receded, and there are predictions the crater may flame out completely in coming years.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other reasons to visit. Ancient Silk Road cities with their historic mosques and minarets offer dramatic contrast to Ashgabat with its over-the-top modern architecture and grandiose monuments featuring everything from post-communist leaders and medieval poets to golden horses, the national dog, and a gigantic bull balancing the world on its head.

Given the fact they encounter very few foreign visitors, the Turkmen people are warm and welcoming. If arid landscapes are your thing, around 80% of Turkmenistan is desert. And there’s the novelty of exploring a place that few others have visited in modern times.

“Turkmenistan is unlike any country I have visited,” says the Norwegian writer and anthropologist Erika Fatland, author of “Sovietistan” and other books about Central Asia and the former Soviet Union.

“The shining white marble capital of Ashgabat, with its empty lanes, is one of the weirdest capitals I have ever visited.”

Spangled with golden statues and white marble, Ashgabat is both an architectural wonder and Instagram icon. Many of the structures are shaped like their government functions — like a Ministry of Oil & Gas building that resembles a giant lighter. Others were created to capture Guinness World Records — including the world’s largest indoor Ferris wheel and a colossal horse head that hovers above the national stadium.

At the city’s indoor Russian Bazaar, vendors offer samples of caviar harvested from Turkmenistan’s slice of the Caspian Sea, as this writer discovered during a recent visit. A blend of Persian and Central Asian influences, the culinary scene is surprisingly good. Nightlife is rather limited, but you can grab a cold beer at Clever’s Irish Pub or the Florida British Pub.

Once in a strategic position along the Silk Road trading route between Asia and Europe, the country has multiple UNESCO World Heritage Sites including the Parthian Fortresses of Nisa near Ashgabat and the sprawling ruins of Merv in eastern Turkmenistan. Even more impressive are the richly decorated grand mosque, tombs and towering minaret at Kunya-Urgench in the far north.

“My most beautiful experiences in Turkmenistan were in the countryside, in the desert, where I encountered the friendliest, most hospitable people I have ever met,” says Fatland. “The only drawback was the fermented camel milk, chal, the de facto national drink, that they kept serving me in generous quantities. Let’s just say that it’s an acquired taste.”

Why the sudden shift?

Ironically, Turkmenistan was easier to visit during the Soviet days, when Intourist expedited travel in the USSR. Created in 1929 by autocratic leader Joseph Stalin, the state travel agency was tasked with earning foreign exchange via tourism and making sure visitors (nearly all of them on closely supervised guided tours) only saw the best side of the Soviet Union.

With offices in London, New York and other foreign cities, Intourist lured travelers with striking posters and newspaper ads. Among the tours they offered in the 1930s was a 16-day Immemorial Cities of Turkestan journey that included a stop in “flourishing Ashkhabad.”

Tourism grew slowly at first. But with the Cold War thawing in the 1980s, the USSR was attracting around four million tourists per year. The unraveling of the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall offered a chance to increase visitation even more. Yet Turkmenistan didn’t leap on the bandwagon.

When Moscow offered its 14 socialist republics independence in 1991, Turkmen leader Saparmurat Niyazov initially balked at the notion.

“It’s really all down to Niyazov,” says Lupine. “Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union, his actions demonstrated negativity against perestroika and glasnost. He brought in his own methods after independence, but they were strongly influenced by the Soviet model.”

Or rather the old Soviet model that limited overall tourist numbers and kept them on a tight leash, on guided tours that included only the aspects of Turkmenistan that Niyazov wanted to show the outside world.

Meanwhile, the country’s huge gas reserves meant Turkmenistan was able to remain self-reliant and neutral in the post-Soviet era, eliminating the need for any outside international influence. Even after Niyazov’s death in 2006, the new leadership continued to keep a tight rein on foreign visitation.

But there are hints that change might be just around the corner.

According to the most recent Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) report on Turkmenistan, the country has been plagued by economic woes for nearly a decade. Hoping to attract more foreign investment and increase employment, the government has been seeking economic cooperation with other nations, like the natural gas sharing arrangement it recently forged with Turkey and Iran.

Some observers think the move to simplify its visa approvals process and increase tourism is part of this overall strategy, another way to boost its foreign exchange reserves. Tourism is booming in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, two of its Central Asian neighbors.

“When Uzbekistan simplified their visa procedures after (President Islam) Karimov’s death, tourism increased manifold, and maybe they are hoping for similar effects in Turkmenistan,” says Fatland.

“The other ‘Stans’ have all opened for visa-free entry for many nationalities, so maybe the Turkmen felt the need to loosen up a bit.”