Just outside the town of Bayramaly in Turkmenistan's Mary region lies the biggest archaeological landscape in Central Asia, the oasis of Merv. People have farmed here since the Bronze Age, thanks to the Murghab river, which fans out into the Karakum desert and makes a green island in a sea of sand. Over the centuries, Merv became a great Silk Road city, called Mary or Marw, and at its height in the twelfth century under the Seljuk sultans it was one of the largest cities in the world. Then, in 1221, the Mongols came, and the chroniclers wrote of enormous slaughter. The city never recovered its former glory.
The name on the checkpoint comes from Askhab, an Arabic word meaning companions, a term for the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. Sites bearing that name in the Merv oasis are tied to the early Islamic centuries, when this was a base for the Arab conquest of the east, and later buildings in the area carry Timurid-style iwans, the tall vaulted portals typical of Central Asian architecture. The scale is not like Samarkand's. These are brick structures weathered by wind and heat, but the arches stand against a pale sky in a way that is quietly moving.
Riding to Merv from the town of Mary takes you through flat irrigated land, with cotton fields, canals and poplar lines, and the road is generally straight and decently surfaced. The Karakum is close, and dust, heat and wind are a normal part of the ride, so a scarf and plenty of water are not luxuries. Spring, when the steppe is briefly green, and autumn are far more pleasant than the summer months, when temperatures often pass forty. Riding in Turkmenistan involves paperwork and frequent police checkpoints, so check entry rules, route permissions and insurance with care beforehand.
Bayramaly is a sizeable town of about seventy-five thousand and has fuel, bread and tea houses, and the city of Mary, thirty kilometres on, is better still. Petrol in Turkmenistan has long been cheap, but supplies and rules for foreigners change, so do not assume. Walk the ruins in early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is gentle and the mud brick glows.