I fly into Ashgabat from Baku, arriving late in the evening, and I realise straight away that it's an odd place. Enormous buildings line the boulevard into the city: spanking new, gloriously lit, gleaming white ... but with dark interiors that seem strangely empty. There's no one on the streets.
The morning reveals more. Looking out from the faux Arabian Nights balcony of my hotel room, I see palaces surrounded by Roman columns, their domed roofs topped with golden spires, and rows of high-rise blocks crowned with step pyramids. There's a replica of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia church and, in the midst of it all, something that looks from a distance like a golden butterfly on a gigantic tripod.
I've heard about the personality cult of Turkmenistan's former president, Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-proclaimed Turkmenbashi or 'father of the Turkmens', but nothing has prepared me for this. What lies before me is an entire metropolis, a capital city of half a million people, engineered for the glorification of one man. The centre-piece is what Ashgabatis furtively call 'the sunflower' - the object I took for a golden butterfly. It's a statue of Niyazov, his arms raised and with a flag flying behind him, that turns so it always faces the Sun.
I leave for my first appointment. On the way, yet more white marble buildings reveal themselves: theatres with neoclassical facades in which plays based on the works of Niyazov are performed, and the state publishing house, in the shape of an open book standing upright, where the books of Niyazov are published.
My guide says the city is celebrating the 15th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union, and dozens of new buildings are being opened to mark the occasion. Flags festoon the streets and groups of people stand about in their Sunday best. Except for the policemen in starched uniforms and peaked caps on every street corner, the city has the air of speech day at a well-heeled private school.
But sometimes there's a glimpse of another Turkmenistan. Ancient buses lumber past, tightly packed with passengers in worn-out clothes. Clusters of humble wooden bungalows, warped with age, lie huddled between monuments.