A man who is on a mission to visit every country on the planet has revealed what it is like in ‘the weirdest place on Earth.’
Chris, who goes by the username Authentic Traveling, has been documenting his progress online as he continues to journey across the globe.
Most recently, he visited Turkmenistan which is his 159th country to date – leaving him with just 56 left to explore.
The content creator, who has gained more than 717,000 followers on Instagram, dished on some of his bizarre findings – including that the internet is banned and driving dirty cars is a crime.
Chris, who goes by the username Authentic Traveling, has been documenting his progress online as he continues to journey across the globe
Chris panned across the deserted scene as he visited the monuments and attractions of Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat
Exploring the space, Chris observed: ‘Calling this place strange is an understatement. The capital city is full of grandiose, utilitarian monuments and virtually devoid of people’
The explorer explained: ‘The country only recently opened up to tourism after being completely closed since 2020’
In his clip, which he uploaded to Instagram last week, Chris began: ‘This is what it is like to travel to the weirdest country on Earth.
‘I am going to Turkmenistan – an isolated landlocked country in Central Asia.’
He continued: ‘The first thing you need to understand is there is no internet here. Essentially, every website is banned and I had to tell people I’d be out of contact for the entire length of my trip.’
Chris later clarified that although there technically is ‘an internet,’ WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, news sites and even airline websites to book tickets out of the country are fully banned.
He said that citizens often use VPNs in a bid to outsmart the ban but these regularly get shut down.
The explorer also explained: ‘You can’t travel here without a pre-approved visa and pre-arranged tour guide for the entire length of your stay.
‘In fact, the country only recently opened up to tourism after being completely closed since 2020.’
Chris panned across the deserted scene as he visited the monuments and attractions of Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat.
The content creator, who has gained more than 717,000 followers on Instagram, dished on some of his bizarre findings
Chris said that although there technically is ‘an internet,’ WhatsApp, Facebook , Instagram, news sites and even airline websites to book tickets out of the country are fully banned
Exploring the space, Chris observed: ‘Calling this place strange is an understatement.
‘The capital city is full of grandiose, utilitarian monuments and virtually devoid of people.
‘There is just an eerie feeling visiting these buildings with scores of empty stores inside almost like a ghost town.
‘It just felt like something was wrong and you couldn’t say exactly what it was.’
He reflected on his findings as he expressed: ‘Turkmenistan’s government has used their vast resource wealth to construct these buildings yet it is clear most of the population lives a significantly lower quality of life.
‘It seems like they want to impress the world with these monuments but for a country that averages just 25 international visitors a day you have to wonder who are they really for?’
In the caption of one of his videos, he noted that he had ‘a lot of questions’ about the way of life in the country, but admitted that he ‘didn’t feel comfortable’ asking them around the locals.
‘Just about everyone who visits notes an eerie lack of people around all the monuments and government built apartment buildings, but the truth is most people live in poorer and older Soviet era apartment buildings in a different part of the city,’ he wrote.
‘Why are government workers given such lavish apartments that they never seem to visit and the rest of the country lives a much lower quality of life?
‘A lot of questions I had, but definitely didn’t feel comfortable asking in Turkmenistan.’
He also added: ‘Ashgabat is known as the city of marble and every car has to be white or silver and it is a crime to drive a dirty car in the city’
However, one of the spots he did enjoy visiting were the ‘gates to hell’ – a gas crater that has been continuously burning since 1969.
While driving along one of the city’s streets, Chris also pointed out something incredibly odd about the array of vehicles on the road – revealing the bizarre reason why every car he saw was either white or silver, and was also sparkling clean.
‘Ashgabat is known as the city of marble and every car has to be white or silver and it is a crime to drive a dirty car in the city,’ he said.
However, one of the spots he did enjoy visiting were the ‘gates to hell’ – a gas crater that has been continuously burning since 1969.
‘It is amazing, it is so hot. You can feel these waves of massive heat coming. Sometimes the wind blows it away, it gets your face so incredibly hot.
‘It’s absolutely amazing to come here to see this really, really cool natural wonder.’
Chris concluded: ‘This is no doubt the weirdest trip I’ve been on.’
Turkmenistan, which was previously under Soviet rule, remains one of the least-visited countries in the world.
More than half of the population is under the age of 30 due to a high birth rate in the decades after independence led to a population boom.
At 70 per cent desert, its economy relies upon cotton growing as well as in the extraction of oil and natural gas.
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