Ancient Wonders Tours & Trips in Turkmenistan

Some aspects of the trip were exceptional, others were, frankly, problematic. The overarching theme is that Intrepid, frankly, seems to have very little understanding of what is actually happening on the ground with its local operators. Starting with the good: our guide in Turkmenistan (Ali) really went out of his way to provide us with an amazing travel experience and presentation of Turkmenistan, including by filling in many of the inexplicable "free time" periods in the official Intrepid itinerary. Independent travel is not permitted in Turkmenistan; "free time" actually means a group activity at the discretion of the tour leader or else sitting around the hotel drinking beer and playing cards. Ali, in response to requests from us and other group members, revised the itinerary to allow an additional excursion to Gonor Depe from Mary (after visiting Merv) as well as a trip to the Carpet Museum in Ashgabat (after returning from Mary). The transport in Turkmenistan was a full-sized 50-person bus, which was admittedly very comfortable but it did seem a bit much for 9 people. Kudos to our driver for being at our beck and call for very long hours. The tent facilities at Darvaza were, frankly, more comfortable than I expected them to be. That segment of the trip was particularly well done. The Uzbekistan portion of the trip was full of problems, starting with the apparent arrest of the tour leader on Day 1 for not being a properly-licensed guide, which resulted in the orientation being cancelled and the group having to get themselves to the airport for the flight to Khiva without tickets or guide. We are not familiar with the particulars since we only joined the tour in Khiva on Day 2. The hotel in Khiva was, literally, a construction site. We arrived a day early and were its very first guests; the remainder of the group were its second guests. The hotel was not yet finished. Construction workers were hammering, moving around furniture, etc, all day. The dining room was occupied by a seamstress making curtains. In fairness to the hotel, the owner and manager really went out of their way to make us as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, including going above-and-beyond in hospitality. I am sure it will be a very nice hotel when it is actually completed. The last-minute replacement guide (Sasha) was knowledgable and made every effort to be helpful, but inexperienced. He candidly acknowledged that it was was first time guiding a group of more than 2 people and he only started learning English 6 months prior. He gets an A+ for effort and I am sure he will make a very good guide with more experience. The Intrepid itinerary misstates the border crossing into Turkmenistan as Xojeli instead of Shavat. This caused some confusion/consternation on the bus to the border as it appeared we were being taken to the wrong place and we were concerned about whether our Turkmenistan guide would be in the right place. Sasha could not explain the discrepancy. Overall, we enjoyed the tour, although we are forced to wonder whether Intrepid/Tourradar actually added much value and whether we could have a similar experience if we had just visited Khiva independently (as we did the rest of Uzbekistan) and dealt directly with a local Turkmenistan operator for that country.