Latest fromTurkmenistan

"Ashgabat", our guide Dima said slowly, choosing his words carefully between mouthfuls of steaming meat pie, "is paradise".

There are vast oil reserves under the Caspian and swimming in its waters are giant caviar-bearing beluga sturgeon.

There are vast oil reserves under the Caspian and swimming in its waters are giant caviar-bearing beluga sturgeon. Both riches have been the subject of disputes between the nations that claim a share of the Caspian and some of these disagreements centre on just how one defines these waters - as international ocean waters or inland sea or lake?

Turkmenistan is nearly 90 per cent desert but in the capital the waterfalls almost never seem to stop flowing. They do so at the expense of the fast-shrinking Aral Sea, one of Central Asia's greatest environmental disaster zones.

The market held on the outskirts of Ashgabad every weekend is possibly Central Asia's largest bazaar.

It's always a little disconcerting the first time one hears a car parked at the Tolkuchka bazaar bleating.

Ashgabat is possibly the world's weirdest (and somewhat sinister) capital city, writes Jill Worrall.