FIELD
NOTES
Long-form dispatches from the road — visa logistics, weather notes, people we meet, and photography from the dunes.
Visa for Turkmenistan — practical 2026 guide
Turkmenistan keeps one of the world's strictest visa regimes. Here's the working version of how to get in — Letter of Invitation, consular sweep and the things nobody tells you about the airport.
Why the Karakum at sunrise is the loudest silence
Most deserts are loud at dawn — wind, distant traffic, the rustle of plastic. The Karakum is not. A photographer's note on the strange acoustic moment between 4:50 and 5:30 AM.
Meeting a carpet weaver in Mary
We took a small group to a back-street workshop in Mary on a Tuesday afternoon in October. The weaver was 71 years old, on her 14th carpet. None of us spoke for the first ten minutes.
The night the Darvaza wind picked up
October 2025, a routine two-day expedition to the crater. By 22:00 the wind was twenty knots. By 23:00 we had moved the camp to leeward of the rim. A field note on what almost happened.