• Date of visit: September 11 2026
• Post office visited: General Post Office in Ashgabat
• Cost of sending postcard: 31–33 manat
• Postcards available at: Russian Market close to General Post Office
• Delivery time: fastest to Germany. 13 days

I’ll write about all five countries in the order we visited them. First is Turkmenistan, the country I had expected to be the most complicated for sending postcards.

All five countries on our route rank low when it comes to political rights and civil liberties, but Turkmenistan stands apart even among them. In Freedom House’s 2026 ranking, it scores just 1 out of 100.

Before we could enter the country, there were of course a few queues to get through. First a queue to confirm that we were indeed us and that we had an invitation to Turkmenistan, and to get the necessary papers. Then another queue to pay the visa fee ($87), immigration fee ($14) and COVID test ($33).

After that came one final, much shorter queue for the COVID test itself. A very symbolic touch of a cotton swab inside the nose, and we were officially in Turkmenistan. We had also prepared to declare the cash and medicines we were carrying. Nobody asked. So much for that preparation.

The hotel where our small group of seven stayed was anything but small. Hotel Olympia had been built for the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (2017).

Ashgabat had run into one small problem when bidding for the Games: the city had fewer than one million inhabitants. Once the population requirement became clear, the city limits were expanded almost overnight. Problem solved.

We had arrived in the morning, and our city tour started soon afterwards. The same pattern continued everywhere: white buildings, white marble and white cars.

Ashgabat actually holds a Guinness World Record for the highest density of white marble-clad buildings. When the record was registered in 2013, there were 543 of them within an area of 22 square kilometres.

According to our guide, Ashgabat would now like another Guinness World Record, this time for being the world’s whitest city. Apparently, this also includes the cars, with very few non-white ones now being imported. Looking around us, that wasn’t difficult to believe. During our entire stay in the capital, I think I saw perhaps four cars that weren’t white.

Horses are another story. Akhal-Teke horses are one of Turkmenistan’s national symbols, with their own annual Horse Day, races and even a beauty contest. The country has even had a Horse Minister. And the official motto for 2026? “Independent Neutral Turkmenistan – the Homeland of Purposeful Winged Horses.”

And if the buildings weren’t enough, then came the sculptures and monuments. Huge, detailed and powerful. Among the others, there was the Independence Monument, the Neutrality Monument and even a giant monument in the shape of the Ruhnama, the book written by Turkmenistan’s first president.

The roads around the new government district were enormously wide and almost empty of both cars and people. Our guide blamed the heat. Perhaps that explained some of it, but even around the university we didn’t see any students. During the whole tour of the newer part of the city, we saw only a few cleaners sweeping the sides of those enormous roads with ordinary brooms, and an occasional uniformed guard by a monument.

Too much white? For me, yes. Too much marble? Probably. Too empty? Definitely. And then came the contrast.

Eventually we reached the older part of Ashgabat, and the city suddenly looked quite different. There were people on the streets and much more colour. The women’s long, light and colourful dresses were a complete contrast to all the white marble we had just left behind.

But wait. The post office.

And this was also where we found the Main Post Office. Our long-awaited stop.

Turkmenistan’s independent postal history is relatively short. Until 1991, it was part of the Soviet postal system. The country’s first own postage stamp was issued in April 1992, and Turkmenistan joined the Universal Postal Union in January 1993.

It was time to see how the system worked in practice.

We didn’t otherwise feel particularly watched or controlled. But before we left the group, we agreed where to meet again. Our guide added that if the police came and asked why we were standing there, we should just say we were waiting for our group.

We left the group and went inside.

Counter No. 6.

The woman behind the counter quickly told us that international postage was 33 manat. At the unofficial exchange rate that was a little under €2. At the official rate, or if we had paid by card, it would have been around €8. Even at the unofficial rate, postage seemed expensive by Turkmenistan standards. A litre of fuel, for comparison, cost around eight cents.

On the counter was an A4 sheet listing twenty countries, including Estonia. We didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. Postage was 33 manat. Did we want stamps or not?

There was another problem. We didn’t have any postcards. None of the museums we had visited that day sold them. The closest we had found was a calendar in the National Museum.

The woman sighed and pointed towards the door.

“Russian Market.”

The small indoor market was about 300 metres away. Most stalls sold food or dresses, but eventually we found a souvenir corner and, more importantly, a small selection of postcards. They came in sets. We could choose buildings, horses or dogs. I had hoped to find cards showing people in traditional dress, but there were none.

Armed with postcards, we went to an internet café in a corner of the market. The coffee was very good, and the internet was surprisingly decent, although not every website was accessible.

We prepared our postcards and returned to Counter No. 6.

The answer was still 33 manat. Everywhere.

Two stamps on each card, the woman explained: a B and an M. Then we should put them into the post box in the corner of the post office.

But could she hand-cancel them?

No.

Well, not exactly no. The cards would be collected, brought to their counter the following day and cancelled then.

We put them into the box and hoped for the best. At least there seemed little danger of them disappearing into an automatic cancelling machine.

The next morning, we tried another post office, this time closer to our hotel. The woman didn’t seem to deal with foreign customers very often, especially ones wanting to send postcards all over the world. She made a phone call to find out what to do with us, then wrote down a list of countries, the same ones we had seen on the printed list at the Main Post Office.

She gave us her own explanation of what the list meant. According to her, mail could currently travel only through those countries. She refused to accept cards addressed directly to countries that weren’t on the list. Her suggestion was to leave them with someone local who could try again later, when the right country appeared on the list. Next week, she said, Germany might be possible again.

The only problem was that we didn’t have a friend in Ashgabat to leave them with.

So, for the first time in our postcard-sending history, we sent a card to Germany “via Estonia”. That worked. She accepted it.

This post office also had a different opinion about the stamps. According to the woman there, the minimum was B + G. The price was exactly 31 manat, not 33.

Later that day we returned to the Main Post Office. We were told that the cards we had put into the post box there the previous day, addressed normally and without any “via” countries, had already been cancelled and sent on their way.

Looking at my photo of the list later, its heading actually referred to those countries as transit routes, not final destinations.

Turkmenistan is particularly proud of its neutrality. Its status as a permanently neutral state was formally recognised by the United Nations in 1995. On our second evening, I happened to talk to a local man in a restaurant.

“Just look at our neighbours,” he said, referring to Iran and Afghanistan. “We can’t fight with them. But Uzbekistan is beautiful.”

Uzbekistan was where we were heading next, but we weren’t there yet. First we had a long night train journey across Turkmenistan to Daşoguz. Around 70 per cent of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert, and this was a long journey north across it.

I had imagined that the night train would give me plenty of time to write a few more postcards. It didn’t. The journey was quite colourful, with more than a few reminders of Soviet times. We played cards, as one should on a night train, while new passengers occasionally appeared at our door, apparently hoping for a place in our compartment, and various other strange things were going on along the corridor. There was even a tiny space optimistically called the buffet. Somehow there was no time for postcards at all.

Andry, however, did manage to write his.

When we arrived in Daşoguz, the first thing we did was drive to the post office. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and the post office was closed.

So our final postcards from Turkmenistan went into the post box outside the post office.

Leaving the country was surprisingly straightforward. I showed my passport, confirmed that I wasn’t carrying any cigarettes, received an exit stamp and shortly afterwards we were in Uzbekistan.

By the time this post was published, the first postcards had already arrived. And surprise, surprise: four had already arrived in Germany, a country that wasn’t even on the list. The fastest took just 13 days. And no, it wasn’t the one marked “via Estonia”.

Next Post Office Diary: Uzbekistan.

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