Saturday we went for a drive, to scope out the border crossing to Iran at Artyk, about an hour and a quarter’s drive east of Ashgabat, mostly out of curiosity. I’m glad we did–there is a new bypass road from the M37 straight to the border crossing that had not been mapped and does not appear on any satellite imagery in the OSM editors. We collected GPS traces and Mapillary imagery (now being uploaded) and will work on updating this approach. While there, we mapped most of the village of Artyk, collecting street names (lots of signage!)

Then on the return we stopped in Balykçylyk to find out if we can buy fresh fish from the fish farm there (yes, we can!) and mapped most of that village as well as the fish farm itself. Our final major mapping foray was Ýaşlyk, site of the Berk brewery as well as, it turns out, a rather large jail.

I had never driven the old highway that used to be the only road connecting Ashgabat and Mary, so we decided to take it back to Ashgabat instead of the M37. We discovered that the road stops abruptly at what used to be a railroad crossing, but now is a dead end at the railroad tracks. We used OSM to navigate on back roads till we came out on the M37 again, but had we not taken the alternate route, we would not have noticed in satellite imagery that the railroad crossing had been decommissioned.