Welcome to the No Travel Worries Blog! My name is Steve Borgford and I am the owner and founder of No Travel Worries LLC, your passport to a worry free adventure. I come from a long line of travelers in my family, from my Icelandic Viking ancestors who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in search of a new land to my grandfather who was a pilot for United Airlines. Travel to me is not just a passing interest or even a hobby; it is my life, my blood and who I am! I have traveled everywhere....well ok, not everywhere, I have never been to Africa, nor have I been to South America, but I'd say I have a pretty solid travel resume.
The focus of my travels and business is the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), otherwise known as the ex-USSR republics. Since I speak fluent Russian, I have a built in advantage when traveling around these nations that your average traveler does not posses. It comes in handy especially when I am out in the Russian countryside since English is a rarity.
One of the most interesting places I've been in the ex-Soviet republics is the reclusive, rarely heard of nation of Turkmenistan. This nation, sitting just above Iran and on the east shores of the Caspian Sea, is little known outside of oil tycoons and/or world traveler wonks like myself. Up until 2006 it was led by a rather crazy dictator, President for Life, Turkmenbashi, literally meaning Father of All Turkmens. However, this was not his real name, his real name was Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov. When Turkmenbashi ruled Turkmenistan weird quirky rules and laws dominated this oil rich nation.
It's hard to name the weirdest law, as there were so many! My favorite one was the driver's license requirement. In most nations in order to obtain a driver's license, one needs to complete a test to demonstrate his or her's knowledge of the rules of the road. Not in Turkmenistan! In Turkmenistan, in order to get a driver's license you need to read and pass a test on President for Life Turkmenbashi's manifesto, I mean book/autobiography, The Ruhnama. This "holy book" is a combination of random rants, spiritual stories and revisionist history. In case having the Ruhnama in every bookstore in all of Turkmenistan wasn't enough, citizens had the luxury of visiting a gigantic life size monument in the nation's capital, Ashgabat. Every night around sunset the book opens and a recording of a passage from the holy grail is read aloud with a video to accompany it.
Other strange and weird laws during Turkmenbashi's reign were: drivers had to maintain a clean car at all times, no listening to the radio while in the city, no cinema (movies would only be shown to groups of people who voted on one movie), gold teeth were discouraged, a decree to rename the word "bread" after his mother and news anchors were not allowed to wear makeup.
In case you want to read more about my adventures while in Turkmenistan visit my blog I wrote while I was there chronicling all my adventures and the weird things I came upon. www.centralasia11.blogspot.com/
Thanks for reading and check back regularly for more posts about my travels!
Nice!
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