My sense of surprise after 36 hours in Ashgabat, the first capital east of the Caspian Sea to the north of Iran, was augmented by the fact that I had just read Chapter One of The Lost Heart of Asia by travel writer Colin Thubron.

Published in 1994, the text describes Turkmenistan as he found it at the start of the post-Soviet era.

"Ashkhabad...evoked no feelings at all," he wrote. "Scanned from any height, the city looked impermanent, almost pastoral: a shanty-town whose tin and asbestos roofs drowned in trees against the vaporous Kopet Dagh [a mountain range]."

The clue was in the date: 1994. Yes, as we drove around the city in our media coach, with curtained windows, we did glimpse a very occasional block or two that might have answered to Thubron's description.

But otherwise the fabric of the city, at least the quite considerable areas that we were shown, has been utterly, utterly transformed in the space of two decades, utilising the proceeds from selling Turkmenistan's extensive natural gas and oil resources.

I cannot think of a place, outside the Greek islands at least, whose stock of buildings is so universally white, and this was not an effect contrived by the recently fallen snow.

Wide city street after wide city street is flanked by solid, new-built, eleven or twelve-storey, white apartment blocks.

Ashgabat is renowned for its white marble buildings, many of which look particularly striking at night ©AFP/Getty Images



Ashgabat, said our guide Batyr - "Call me Bat" - is "in the Guinness records book for having more marble buildings than any other city", and I can well believe it.

The impression of uniformity was accentuated because shops and cafés seemed, as far as I could tell to be very discreetly signposted, certainly by western standards; I don't recall seeing any big store-front or showroom-style windows.

Those edifices that did stand out tended to be monuments, a few upmarket hotels and (surprisingly) Ministries. A taste for gold-coloured domes and gold-coloured statues, in contrast to the white, was also evident.

The overall effect - particularly given the energy with which the country under President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is endeavouring to market itself as a host of major sports events - is of a Central Asian Doha, but with elements of a central Asian Berlin and a central Asian Milton Keynes thrown in.

After a while, however, the surprise, even wonder, engendered by one of the world's most extraordinary construction sprees turns into a sense of disorientation.

This is caused, I think, by the contrast between things that have changed to the nth degree since the Soviet period and things that have changed, you suspect, very little.

For example, while the apartment blocks look many times more solid and comfortable than any Soviet era tower block I have ever encountered, and while the urban streets are thronged with Nissans and Toyotas guzzling petrol priced (according to Bat) at four-and-a-half litres a dollar, the city's layout remains, I thought, eerily reminiscent of a Communist capital.

Turkmenistan flags flying near the Independence Monument in Ashgabat, one of the central sites of the capital ©AFP/Getty Images



Based on what our party observed, moreover, Berdimuhamedov - whose picture is everywhere - appears to enjoy the sort of fawning adulation among his entourage that one used to associate with Communist leaders.

Again, surprisingly, there is very little street advertising evident – which I remember being the first thing that struck me the first time I set foot behind the old Iron Curtain.

(Having said that, a sizeable building with three big screens on its façade, one of them featuring Mickey Mouse, is, I was told, a toy store.)

There is, it was confirmed, no McDonald's, though there is, apparently, a native Turcoman burger joint.

Our visit to the carpet museum, and an impressive 301 square metre, wall-mounted rug, also hinted at a reluctance to re-write history until it was officially rewritten.

This monster, our guide (not Bat) said proudly, was the biggest hand-made carpet in the world, as vouched for, once again, by that Guinness records book.

And yet, a few minutes later, the same guide informed us that a new, bigger, 378 square metre "giant carpet" had been made, also in Turkmenistan, in 2011.

In another trait that made you think Turcoman time must move in two dimensions - either at express pace or not at all - extract a camera in the centre of town and you are very likely to be confronted by a soldier or policeman telling you that photography of whatever it is that caught your eye is not permitted.

This happened to us, most surprisingly, at a statue of Lenin that we were told was one of just three things, along with a bank and a flour factory, that survived a devastatingly destructive earthquake in 1948.

These photo-stopping officials were, for the most part, friendly enough. It made me wonder if this was not partly a make-work scheme for soldiers of a country recognised by the United Nations as the first neutral state in the world.

This gesture is commemorated by the grandiose and wonderfully-named Arch of Neutrality.

We were in Ashgabat to witness the signing of an historic agreement opening the door for athletes from the Oceania region to participate for the first time in the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG), which the city is hosting in 2017.

Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah - clearly as impressed with the city's construction boom as any of us, and no doubt more familiar - suggested at one point that all Ashgabat needed to make itself a worthy host of even bigger events was experience.

Turkmenistan's desire to host more events has been complemented by sporting success, including for sambo player Gulbadam Babamuratova (second left) who won the first gold medal of the Asian Beach Games earlier this month ©OCA



In other words, the infrastructure is here: though the current airport seemed underpowered, a new one is expected to be ready in 2016.

Based on the venues so far built within the $5 billion (£3.5 billion/€4 billion) Olympic Complex that is taking good shape now near the centre of town, you would have to conclude that the Sheikh is right.

The complex's new velodrome looked particularly impressive and it will be interesting to see whether the idea of linking venues via an on-site monorail now becomes de rigueur.

The continent is, of course, about to embark on a period in which a particularly high proportion of the biggest international sporting events are set to be staged there.

The 2018, 2020 and, more than likely 2022 Olympic Games, the 2022 World Cup, the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the list goes on.

"Welcome to Asia - now to 2022," Sheikh Ahmad proclaimed, as ebullient as I have seen him.

"This continent has grown to become a sporting superpower," the visiting Sebastian Coe, no mean sporting superpower himself, asserted.

In terms of event hosting, he too was right.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.