In 2010, my then girlfriend (now wife) Lil and I tried but failed to obtain visas to visit her grad school friend who lives in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. We never found out the reason why, but ended up having a wonderful vacation in Turkey that summer instead. But you know the old saying goes, “If a government denies your visa for no apparent reason, try, try again.”
So that’s what we did two years later, this time employing the services of STANTOURS, a local travel agency which promised to shepherd our application through the halls of Turkmen bureaucracy and hopefully produce the coveted “Letter of Invitation.” The LOI is a prerequisite to obtaining a visa, and once you have it, getting the stamp is as easy as mailing your passport to the Turkmen embassy in DC.
Below was our routing, combining a paid transcon ticket to visit relatives for Christmas with a UA partner JCL award. On the way back we spent a week in Madrid since neither of us had ever been to Spain before.
AA Y: JFK-LAX (Paid)
LH C: LAX-FRA-GYD-ASB
TK C: ASB-IST-MAD
SN C: MAD-BRU-JFK
This report picks up in December 2012 as we prepare to leave Los Angeles for Central Asia
