Türkmenabat

The city stands at an old crossing of the Amu Darya, where caravans between Merv and Bukhara had to be ferried over the river. The town that served the crossing was Amul, a walled trading place of the medieval Islamic world whose name is still used for the site beside the modern city. Amul was taken and retaken as the region passed between Persian, Arab, Turkic and Mongol rulers, and for centuries afterwards the crossing and its hinterland lay under the Emirate of Bukhara.

The modern city is the child of the railway. When Russia pushed the Trans-Caspian Railway eastwards in the 1880s it reached the Amu Darya here, and a long timber bridge carried the line over the river towards Bukhara and Samarkand. The settlement that grew beside it, Chardzhou, became a river port and rail junction handling cotton, and steamers worked the river upstream and down.

Under Soviet rule Chardzhou was the centre of an irrigated cotton district and gained cotton-ginning and silk mills and food plants, while the Karakum Canal, dug in the 1950s, drew water westwards from the river. The city was renamed Türkmenabat after independence, and in the years since the centre has been rebuilt with marble-faced public buildings in the national style. Road and rail bridges opened in 2017 span the Amu Darya, and the city remains the country's main gateway towards Uzbekistan.

Lebap — the name means "riverbank" — has a character of its own within Turkmenistan. The Ersari are the main Turkmen group along this stretch of the Amu Darya, and their carpets are distinct from the Teke weaving of the west and centre. Centuries of rule from Bukhara left a strong Uzbek presence in the province, and the speech of the city mixes Turkmen and Uzbek; Russian is still heard among older residents.

Religious life is quiet and centred on the family, the mosque and the shrine. Pilgrimage to the tombs of holy men elsewhere in the province is a normal part of the year, and visits are made with modest dress and without ceremony. Weddings are the great public events, with large gatherings, music, a bride in heavy embroidered red, and gifts that can take a family years to prepare for.

Hospitality follows the national pattern: a guest is fed before anything else is discussed, tea is poured constantly and the bowl is filled only part-way as a sign that it will be refilled. Women in the city commonly wear the long Turkmen dress, koynek, in strong colours, with collars and sleeves embroidered in coloured silk in a craft practised across the country. Public life is orderly and formal, and national holidays are marked with organised concerts and sport.

About 230,000 people live in Türkmenabat, making it the second-largest city in the country after Ashgabat and the administrative centre of Lebap province. Its work is mixed: cotton ginning, textiles and silk, food processing, river and rail freight, and the state offices, hospitals and colleges that a provincial capital carries. Much of the industrial and transport work that made the city a Soviet hub has since moved to Ashgabat or closed. The surrounding district is farmland watered from the Amu Darya, growing cotton, wheat, vegetables and the melons the region is known for.

Most residents live in Soviet-era apartment blocks or in single-storey houses with courtyards, vines and fruit trees, while the rebuilt avenues of the centre hold the newer marble apartment buildings and public institutions. The day starts early, especially in summer: the bazaar is busiest soon after dawn, offices and schools run through the morning, and the hottest hours are spent indoors before the streets fill again in the evening.

Life is shaped by the state, which supplies much of the employment and administers services, and by the river, which supplies the water. Water use, dust and the long summer heat are constant concerns, and the cotton harvest takes over the autumn. Cross-border trade with Uzbekistan, only a short distance away, matters to the city's economy, as does the flow of freight between Central Asia and the Caspian ports.

Türkmenabat eats the national dishes with an eastern accent. Palow, the rice cooked with mutton, carrots and onions in a heavy cauldron, is the dish of celebration; dograma, bread, meat and onion torn and mixed into a broth, is the festival dish; and chorba, a mutton and vegetable soup, is everyday food. Chorek, round bread baked on the wall of a tandyr oven, comes with every meal and is treated with care. Ishlekli, a large meat pie baked in ashes, appears at gatherings.

Proximity to Uzbekistan shows on the table. Lagman, hand-pulled noodles in a broth of mutton and vegetables, manty, large steamed dumplings, and samsa, meat pastries baked against the side of the oven, are sold everywhere, along with shashlyk grilled over charcoal. Fish from the Amu Darya, usually fried or grilled, is a local speciality found in few other parts of the country.

The melons are the region's pride: Turkmen melons were sent across the Soviet Union, and in late summer the roadsides and the bazaar are stacked with them, beside watermelons, grapes, apricots and pomegranates. Green tea, gök çaý, is drunk through the day and with every meal. Chal, fermented camel's milk, and gatyk, a thick sour yoghurt, are the traditional cooling drinks of the hot months.