I drove, or more precisely was driven, from Ashgabat to Dashoguz across the Karakum Desert on May 29, collecting Mapillary imagery (presently being uploaded, please be patient) and location data for POIs using Pocket Earth and MAPS.ME. We collected the numbers of the gas stations and the names of villages (i.e., navigation waypoints) en route plus locations of clinics and the district hospital in Ruhubelent. Met a Dutch tourist at the cafe near the Darwaza fire crater who was navigating with MAPS.ME and said it was extremely useful for getting around both Iran and Turkmenistan.

Once in Dashoguz we spent some time collecting more street names, some POIs, and correcting a few anomalies. If tourism ever is allowed to flourish in Turkmenistan, this will be a major route from points in Uzbekistan to Ashgabat.

You may notice in the ground-level imagery taken May 29 that the sky is white and visibility is limited to about a mile. This is because the area was subjected to a salt storm caused by winds kicking up salt from the desiccated seabed of the evaporating Aral Sea. This ecological disaster confronted us travelers in a particularly stark manner.