The organization was however perfect and I would say pharaonic: for make us easily reach the Koitentag they had even arranged a special train just for us with luxury sleeping cars ... and in the ten hours of travel in each town we passed there was cheering crowds to greet us!
The purpose of our trip was to visit some locations that may allow this region to become a "Geopark" UNESCO: surely the most important of these is the area with the footprints of dinosaurs, the Cave of the 40 Young Girls and the Cave of Kupp of Coutun.

The promenade of the Dinosaurs
It is an absolutely amazing place with thousands of dinosaur footprints perfectly preserved: among them you can follow the movement of an individual animal for more than 300 meters (world record). Now are paleontologists from the University of Bologna, who are conducting studies and research on this new site.
The layer with the footprints was discovered not many years ago after a landslide and it is highly probable that many other impressions are located still buried. This is perhaps a good thing, because currently the site is deteriorating quickly enough at cause of surface erosion that essentially is favored both by the harsh climate of the area and the strong steepness of the slope. Partially then the degradation is derived from human vandalism due to the fact that the site has become famous, but at the time, was not implemented any practical action of protection so in various places you can see large written with indelible paint and even signatures scratched within footprints.

The Cave of the 40 Young Girls
With a one-hour walk in a beautiful canyon we reach a majestic cave whith a perennial spring inside. From a distance it seems that the whole roof of the cave, partially illuminated by the sun's rays that penetrate the great portal, is lined with multicolored stalactites .... but it is not so: in fact approaching we realized that they are thousands of ribbons of fabric "fixed" at the roof with a ball of mud.
The reason for this ritual stems from the fact that this cave is considered a sacred because of the presence of perennial spring and because it is said that, in a remote time, 40 virgins killed themselves here inside to avoid being violated by invaders.
Local people make a pilgrimage to the cave and collect the mud from the floor to which attach a strip of fabric that they launch at the roof trying to attack it as high as possible and express a desire ... They believe that, if the tape will remain hanging, their wish will come true soon.
According to the people who actually inhabit the region and which reasonably have been able to walk to the cave, some local folklore academics have calculated that this ritual must go back at least 2-300 years ago.

The Kupp Coutun Cave
About thirty years ago, when I was working in the first edition of "Cave Minerals of the World", I encountered some articles that talked about a fabulous Russian cave on the border with Afghanistan where were incredible concretions of gypsum and an amount, which seemed to me almost absurd, of strange cave minerals: a kind of "Eldorado" for a young fan of cave minerals... From that moment, for me, Kupp Coutun (in Turkmen Gapgotan Gowangy) had become a dream and, as such, I never thought I had a real opportunity to visit it.
Instead, here I am in front of one of its entrances.
It 'a mining tunnel that starts from the base of a deep canyon: you walk inside it for about 300 meters and, suddenly, you enter a huge collapse hall.
The Kupp Coutun is a complex karst system of which today we know more than 50 km, but much more remains to be explored in it: the progression is fairly easy, and unfortunately, this has caused the partial destruction of its concretion at least in its initial parts.
During the visit returned to my mind the descriptions made, many years before, from russian cavers, at that time seemed to me exaggerated and probably fanciful. Instead it was all true and even more. Much of the walls are covered with a layer of gypsum that makes unique forms: candlesticks that stretch out their arms for several meters from the ceiling, cave stalagmites, more like miniature volcanoes than normal concretions and then hollow bubble and more…
But are the minerals found there that make this cave a real mineralogical treasure: celestine blue or purple fluorites on white aragonite coralloid and again almost unknown minerals such as cinnametabarite the fraipontite or mumjo (this is a complex decaying organic material) . And not only ...
The visit runs fast and after only 4 hours of stay in the underground we have to go back, not without having first discovered a little cavernicolous bug that literally "walks" on water: in all probability a new living species for science!
The Kupp Coutun cave is really a unimaginable treasure, worthy of finally being studied in a systematic way.

The gypsum caves and the blind fish
When moving from one site to another, we realize that the area is not only important for the dinosaur footprints or caves in limestone, but there are also large gypsum karst: in fact only a few meters from the road we walk each day can be seen the impressive portals of gypsum caves, collapse dolines, Karren etc... Immediately I go into fibrillation, to the fact that I am a fan of this type of karst. I try in every way to convince the organizers to allow us to pause for a moment to put the nose in at least one of these caves. But there 's nothing to do.
Our sorrow increases exponentially when we learn that in a rare visit to one of these caves, inside a large underground lake, has been found a blind fish: the only one known in a gypsum cave!
This fact further reinforces our desire to come back in order to carry out speleological research in the whole area.
For this reason, before leaving Turkmenistan, we leave a research spelaeological project, that if accepted, will in a future permit to La Venta to return in this beautiful region.

Paolo Forti