Inside the WORLD'S MOST SECRETIVE COUNTRIES (Part 1 - Turkmenistan)

I'm Sal Ivalo and I have been to every single country in the world this includes all of the famous ones that millions of tourists go to every single year like France and Italy Canada Brazil South Africa Kenya India Japan Australia all of them but it also includes all of the countries that you maybe never heard of in all of the countries that you've been taught to be afraid of that have secretive societies that don't give access to foreigners that are off-limits I've been to all of them so today I am here and I'm going to tell you about my experience inside the five most secretive countries in the world so here we go first off we have Turkmenistan this country located in Central Asia has one of the world's largest reserves of natural gas which has made it a very wealthy country for a long time been at the crossroads of many civilizations it was on the Silk Road route getting a lot of influence from China wedged between Russia and Iran it was part of the Soviet Union for almost seven decades and got its independence in the early 90s before independence from 1985 until his death in 2006 Turkmenistan was ruled by its president for life Turkmenbashi now Turkmenbashi was a very unique character who instituted some kind of insane laws such as banning the circus and the Opera because they weren't sufficiently Turkmen but also did a lot to try and help the country giving like free education and like using the resource wealth as best as he could however he kept the country very very closed for fear of some influence coming from the outside such as what had happened for the decades of being under the Soviet Union he also underwent a process to make ashgabat the capital of Turkmenistan the White City bringing in all this marble and constructing dozens of enormous buildings ministries and even residential places out of this white marble now since his death in 2006 the election of his successor in 2007 Turkmenistan has begun to open slowly but surely the most famous example of Turkmenistan opening up its doors was the 2017 Asian indoor and martial arts Games they tried very hard to get the role of hosting this international sporting event and when they did so they spent billions of dollars on building all of the venues however when it came time for the games the government had given so few visas to spectators from other countries they had given so few visas even for media that it became this kind of eerie event where spectators were brought in from like the Turkmen like countryside into the stands just to sit there you know wave a flag and pretend that they were supporting whatever the sporting was Turkmenistan hiding itself from the outside world is often stated by its government as part of its permanent neutrality so they're about half a dozen countries in Europe that have and given permanent neutral status then you have Costa Rica Panama and the only other one is Turkmenistan kind of a strange list what that means is it won't take any sides in any international political strife the reasons why some tourists want to go and explore Turkmenistan are mostly three reasons one just because of it being closed off not that many people go there lots of interesting things to see that few people get to see the second is the Darwaza gas crater also known as the gates to hell this incredibly fascinating man-made but natural wonder is in the middle of the desert 80% of Turkmenistan is desert in the middle of the desert there was a natural gas field and a rig the rig collapsed and so they thought that what they could do was to burn the burn the reserve underneath they lit it on fire thinking to take a week or a couple weeks to burn through it all rather than it escaping into the atmosphere but it's been burning now for almost 50 years so people love to go there love to like camp around the rim look down into the kind of creepy like alien landscape and the third reason is is ash cobot is the White City is kind of seeing this unique place so just how hard is it to visit Turkmenistan as a tourist so getting the visa is infamously difficult and you can only get a visa going through a tour guide and having like booked some kind of tour really to get anywhere outside of the capital city of ashgabat you must be with a guided tour group however if you get a transit visa if you're going across the country by train you can get permission kind of to to do that transit on your own in the capital city Vajra you're allowed to walk around on your own however there are so many places that are off-limits there are places you can't even take pictures of parts of the street that you can't walk in I was too cold so Aziz gave me his coat he says he's not cold I don't really believe him I'm warm so I'm happy so we can continue the search for something to do I was in Turkmenistan for four days in 2016 and I first did two days of a tour where two other tours and myself went to Darwaza to the gas crater driving through like the desert camping that night they're looking out at the fire it was very cold but absolutely worth it very fascinating but what I'll always remember about Turkmenistan was the two days later that I spent in Ashgabat the city is so unique it's very empty and yet the infrastructure is fantastic wide roads tall buildings beautiful parks beautiful plazas and most tourists when they go there they will just talk about this eerie sense of it being like empty and devoid of life but I actually had a really fascinating two days because I was at a restaurant with some of the other tourists the first night and as we were walking out somebody had to go to the bathroom so I was standing like at the entrance just like waiting for the group to get back together and these two guys sitting at a table had asked me like hey are you okay do you need anything and I you know I explained oh I'm just waiting for somebody they invited me to sit down they ended up being like two young Turkmen guys like my age and we ended up in sitting there the three of us for a couple hours just like chatting and I had told them how hard it was to take photos of some of these government sites because the police would always come up to me and tell me to stop and how beautiful I thought it was and I wanted like a good kind of like cityscape of ashgabat so they told me that they actually knew of a residential tower that had a really nice roof that had great view so that they would take me there the next day I ended up spending the entire night with these guys we like stayed at that restaurant for a while sharing stories and like you know just hanging out like young guys do and we actually went back to one of the guys houses where they are having a little house party they gave me like these traditional kind of like Turkmen dumplings that they it's kind of they're like 3:00 a.m. you know after going out food that they usually have and we they played guitar and I don't know just like hanging out with like normal people like you would expect anywhere in the world they spoke English because they like we're students one of them was studying in Russia the other one was just like in Turkmenistan but it was really fun to kind of connect with those guys the next day they picked me up at the hotel and they took me on a little bit of a tour around a Shabbat to like their favorite malls to some of the monuments to like learn a little bit of the history and then of course to get some some more food some like traditional Turkmen food like this like cheese and meat kind of pie thing that was really really good - Thanh definitely like a secretive society like there there's a lot of the country that I wasn't able to see I mean there's ways to go about and do it but I'd have to go back and spend more more time to do that but I loved my time in Ashgabat with these two guys really when you're in a country like this you always think that like the people will be just as I closed off as the government and that's always proven not to be true like anywhere you go there are like people who have the same wants and the same as fears as you do and we can always connect on that kind of stuff so with these young guys in Turkmenistan roaming the streets of ashgabat I like to am like going to a house party you know that could have been any city anywhere so Turkmenistan definitely different but just as beautiful as anywhere else I hope that you enjoyed this video that you learned something new that you see them in a little bit of a new light if you like this video I have so many more I even have some much longer ones about some of the countries that I've discussed so check them out subscribe a comment I respond to all the comments follow me on Instagram or on Facebook and I hope that I'll see you again and that you will travel safe

Channel: Sal Lavallo

Views: 120,819

Rating: 4.905076 out of 5

Keywords: most secretive countries, turkmenistan, world's scariest countries, north korea, ashgabat, darvaza, gates of hell, gates to hell, scariest countries, most unknown countries, most hidden countries, most closed off countries, secret countries, central asia, turkmenbashi, hidden countries, least visited countries, least known countries, the stans, visiting turkmenistan, what to do in turkmenistan, how to visit turkmenistan, turkmenistan tourism

Id: RQ4bBQOKcWg

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2019