Lebap Province

Lebap Province is a very sparsely populated province of Turkmenistan along the Amu Darya River, forming the country's eastern boundary with Uzbekistan.

Cities

• 1 Türkmenabat — the largest city in the region, on the road to Bukhara.
• 2 Kerki — a remote town on the Amu Darya.

Other destinations

• 1 Köýtendag Nature Reserve – home to the Dinosaur Plateau, which contains more than 400 footprints of dinosaurs
• 2 Repetek Nature Reserve , famed for its zemzen, or desert crocodiles. Established in 1928 for the study and preservation of a sand-desert ecosystem, it covers an area of 346 km² (134 sq mi).

Understand

About three-quarters of the region's land area is in the Karakum Desert.

The region's sunny weather and abundance of water resources help produce high-quality long-staple cotton – but the water use along the Amu Darya results in the river not reaching the Aral Sea any more.

See

• 1 Dayahatyn (on the left bank of Amu Darya, 170 km north-west from Turkmenabat and off any common tourist routes). One of the finest and most valuable examples of a caravanserai in Central Asia. Nowadays a ruin, the caravanserai was probably built as a fortress in the 9th century and transformed into a caravanserai during the 11th and 12th centuries and used into the 16th century. The mastery in brickwork of Seljuk architects can still be admired.