A woman walks through a market in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan on March 17.
Soon before she arrived in Turkmenistan in early 2026, Canadian traveler Elyse Williams received a warning from her tour company not to venture far from her hotel in the authoritarian country and to avoid taking photos while alone on the streets.The reality when she arrived was far less regimented than expected. “As you can see by my pictures, it was clearly not the case [that photography was highly restricted]” she told RFE/RL. “I felt very free to take many pictures in lots of different places.”
An April 3 image of a cemetery in Nohur, a village in western Turkmenistan.
Tour agencies who organize trips to Turkmenistan also describe a recent loosening in official attitudes towards foreign visitors.“We have certainly noticed a change,” Dylan Harris, the head of British tour company Lupine Travel, told RFE/RL. “Visas have started to be issued quicker than they have been in the past, plus we haven't had any rejections at all within the past 12 months.”The tour organizer says visa applications have been streamlined by a new online process, but he believes the drop in rejections, “seems highly likely to be linked to what appears to be a decision to start opening up the country more.”
