Those travellers who have followed the Silk Road will have become used to restored cities – Bokhara, Samarkand and Khiva in Uzbekistan. And very fine they are too. But if you venture south to Turkmenistan and visit Merv it is a very different sort of experience.

This 100 square kilometre site contains the remains of at least 5 different cities dating from the 6th century BCE through Alexander the Great and the Persians to the Seljuk Turks. At which point it was totally destroyed by Jenghiz Khan in 1221. The newer cities were built alongside (rather than “over” which is the norm in most continually inhabited sites) the old and all used mud bricks. So what you see is a jumble of walls, earthworks and misshapen buildings as they succumb to the elements.

If you are there you must have overcome the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Turkmenbashi (“Father of the Turkmen”) to get a visa. Indeed you will already be totally overwhelmed by his cult of personality – the gold statues, the photos, the books, the carpets with his picture on, the marble palaces, even his gold monogram in the corner of every TV program as it spouts again the details of this magnificent cotton harvest or that world class factory.

So see Merv as an antidote – a reminder of temporal nature of states whatever their politics and whoever their leader! All will be dust one day.

If you have obtained a visa you will probably be travelling with a guide and, unless you have great knowledge or a wonderful imagination, a guide is really needed in Merv as mud wall succeeds mud wall. He will also have got you through the interminable and frequent road checks needed to travel from Ashgabad to Mary, the Soviet city near to Merv, where you will probably have spent the night before driving on for the last half hour. You will also need a car to get round the site – the distances are enormous.

Among the surviving buildings are the remains of a 7th century fortress known as the Kyz Kala (see photo). Another major building, which has been significantly restored is the 12th century Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. Whilst this latter might represent a pinnacle of Islamic architecture for its simplicity it tended in my mind to become just another “domed mosque” on a journey of domed mosques. It was the, altogether more elemental, Kyz Kala which seemed to me to best capture the atmosphere of the ruins and which I remember when I think of Merv!