Cant afford a tour. Can any agent provide only the LOI for entry into Turmenistan?

[monica30]

So every tour company we have contacted has quoted us like $400-500 per person for a 3 day tour from Khiva border to darwaze and Ashgabat and back.
However, our plan is to:
Day 1 - meet agent/tour company at Shuvat border , collect letter of invite and get visa stamped on passport at entry point.
We take taxi to darwaze and spend overnight at yurt on our own.
Day 2 - take taxi for ashgabat and reach by noon. Spend 4 hours in the city.
Day 2- Take night train to turkmenabad at 8pm
Day 3 - Arrive at Turkemenabad at around 8.30 am, take taxi to farap exit point and leave to bukhara.

This will cost us around $200-300 each + visa fees ($55) + whatever the cost of letter of invite will be.

But (obviously) no tour company wants to let go of the fat bucks and provide juust the letter of invite. They're all saying you can't be without a guide at all times, which I looked up and doesn't seem to be entirely true.

In any case, are there any here who are planning a turkmenistan tour around June 10-13thish? We've been offered an option at $1400 for an SUv for 4 people.

[bwv812]

But (obviously) no tour company wants to let go of the fat bucks and provide juust the letter of invite. They're all saying you can't be without a guide at all times, which I looked up and doesn't seem to be entirely true.

Where did you look this up? Not here, presumably.

https://caravanistan.com/visa/turkmenis ... urist-visa

[Guychgeldi]

if you want to know the price you can write to me [email protected]

[HalaMadrid]

I travelled to Turkmenistan last June not long after they opened up. I too ofcourse didn't want to pay for a tour so I emailed every tour company trying to get them to give us the LOI for a fee and just go solo then. I got a company to Agree but when we got to the border the border guards were having none of it and wouldn't let us enter without a guide. We got lucky because the tour company had someone in Dashoguz that took us to Darvaza and then to Ashgabat and then another driver who showed us around Ashgabat and took us to the border the next day and the tour company admitted their mistake with the rules and let us just pay the $300 that we were supposed to pay originally. But obviously after us even they realised their mistake and only will let you go with a guide now which costs hundreds more.

The only cheap way to do it at the moment is the Transit Visa through the embassy in Yerevan, but for that you will need to transit through the country to another country not your original plan of UZB - TKM - UZB. And they're pretty strict about the route as well, for example they won't let you have a transit Visa from UZB - TKM - KZS because Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan share their own border. It would have to be Iran, or Azerbijan (if the boat is still running, the borders were closed when we went so we went to Iran).