Learn more about a Sundance Vacation

Filed in archive A World Away , information about on December 13, 2009

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A while back MSNBC (and BusinessWeek more recently) have both looked at the growing resort destinations on the shores of the Caspian Sea in unlikely Turkmenistan.

The first six hotels opened in June. The entire Avaza complex is to materialize in three stages to be completed by 2020 at an estimated cost exceeding $5 billion. The resort area will cover an area of 50 square kilometers and stretch along 16 kilometers of beachfront. The complex will feature 60 high-rise hotels, villas, an artificial island and an 8-kilometer manmade river, an amusement park, sports facilities, a large business center, a sports stadium, a health center, a shopping mall, and a new airport to cope with the anticipated stream of visitors - in brief, a huge touristic paradise unmatched in the region. More than a dozen international contractors from Russia, France, Turkey, Iran, and other countries are participating.

Of course, the Caspian really is beautiful. BUt a generation ago no one would have dreamed of a tourism paradise in this former Soviet backwater...