아슈하바트, 다르바자 & 메르브: 투르크메니스탄 7일 대여정

Ashgabat appears through the window before you land - a geometry of white marble pressed against the red foothills of the Kopet-Dag. Formalities move quickly at the airport, and within the hour your first drive through the capital begins: boulevards so uniformly white the city holds the Guinness record for the most marble-clad buildings on Earth. After hotel check-in and lunch, the afternoon is split between past and future. At the Halk Hakydasy Memorial Complex, monumental granite remembers the 1948 earthquake and war dead; a short drive further, the mud-brick ruins of Old Nisa sit in silence - a Parthian royal fortress from the 3rd century BCE that once held the world's largest collection of ivory rhytons. You return to the modern city for the Alem Center, home to the world's largest indoor Ferris wheel, and the tiered glass of the Palace of Marriage. Dinner arrives as floodlights catch the white facades and the boulevards begin to glow.