Turkmenistan: Nohur

Nohur is a remote village in the Kopet Dag Mountains of southern Turkmenistan, with stunning mountain vistas and very unique cultural attractions. The people living here feel they are quite different from other Turkmen and are actually descendants of Alexander the Great’a soldiers who marched through the region. Their traditions blend Islam with animism and Sufism, seen in practices like decorating graves with mountain goat horns to ward off evil spirits – the cemetery is quite spectacular with tons of gravestones all topped of with massive horns! Another key attraction is a climb up to see the Gyz Bibi cave, a narrow crack in the mountain ridge that is a pilgrimage site associated with fertility, where pilgrims tie cloth scraps to a nearby ancient tree for wishes.