I don’t want to give anyone the impression that there were no people in Ashgabat. Mostly, there were almost no people in central Ashgabat or the white marble areas. We saw people in other parts of town.

The first photo was a park that our tour group visited and walked through. You can see that it was a beautiful shady park and a great place to be on a hot day. It was full of people and water and playgrounds and ice cream vendors. I would have taken photos of many of the people in this park but every time I raised my camera in anyone’s direction, they looked nervous or upset, so I opted not to take photos of people nearby. But rest assured, this park had lots of people in it.

I took the second photo from the bus since no one noticed me taking their photo. Other parts of Ashgabat looked normal enough.

The third photo is also a bus photo. This is how school kids dress in Ashgabat. We saw many dozens of school kids, almost all wearing clothing very similar to this.

Inspiration Street and park were just across the road from our hotel. Nora, Vicky and I went for a walk through the park and around a bit of town. Vicky and Nora are on the right side while the other people are garden workers. Remember, our hotel was in central Ashgabat.

We adopted the locals decision to cover ourselves in the 107 degree heat to keep the sun off of us. I guess it worked as we all survived just fine.