My attention was soon diverted, however, by the sheer amount of space in a system of roads, trees and buildings which would have town-planners salivating across the world. This space was juxtaposed by the almost complete absence of other cars and people, at least until we reached our hotel that is, and were greeted by hundreds of dancing youngsters, the girls all wearing colourful, flowing dresses and waving flags while sombre looking men in suits watched on.

It’s fair to say the Turkmenistan capital is not like anywhere else I have visited and, to put it simply, it is surely one of the most bizarre places in the world.

The city, or at least the parts of it we were taken to, was beautiful without exception. By day the buildings were a glorious white, but by nightfall they were illuminated by a flickering array of colourful light, while every few metres a street-light lantern provided another burst of light. It is a sign of a country which is not short of energy resources, and such a liberal use of electricity in a European city would leave it bankrupt in days.

All of the roads were spotlessly clean, with a cleaning operation carried-out about three times per day, while the city seemed bereft of normal elements like shops and restaurants. The lack of people never changed, with security guards the group you were most likely to encounter. Every few metres there was a bus stop, almost always with one person sitting waiting, but we never saw any buses so began to wonder if the people were there for show rather than to actually utilise public transport?

Sky-high apartment buildings also filled every street. Yet in the evening only a handful of the windows were lit-up, suggesting a lack of people living there, and in the middle of the night, those same lights were still on, so were any people actually living there? The crowds which greeted our arrival were not there simply for our benefit, it transpired, but to officially open the two hotels where we were all staying. Yet when we left, we were told the hotels would no longer be open, and all the staff would return to others where they normally work.

Some said it was like a city from Outer Space, others that it was like Disneyland without the atmosphere. It reminder me of the old computer game, Age of Empires, with Ashgabat the dream city you would build when you had already seen-off every rival Empire and thus had limitless resources to do so, (or had taken full advantage of the cheats system...)

On our second day the President of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, was present to speak at the Opening Ceremony, and here the level of weirdness stepped up another level.

Everyone present had to hand over their mobile phones - or in my case, their whole bag - beforehand, to ensure “there were no distractions when the President is speaking”. We were also warned against moving or turning our heads away while he spoke, although breathing, we hoped, was tolerated.

When the great man arrived, locals at both sides of the room started a long hand-clap. One side eventually stopped while the other continued, causing the first side to hurriedly start-again to avoid an unintentional snub. As soon as he began speaking, they all got out pen and paper and started transcribing every word in order to relate them back to the rest of the population, we were told.

I didn’t really know what to make of all of this.

On one hand I hated it. The Cult of Personality was overbearing and there was something very North Korea-like in it all, with the main difference between the two being that Turkmenistan has almost no foreign policy to speak of; indeed it was recognised as “permanently neutral” by the United Nations in 1995.

But why should there be so much spending on lavish, and seemingly rather pointless décor, I thought to myself, while there is widespread poverty in most of the rest of the country, and a distinct lack of many basic rights and freedoms.

Yet on the other, who are we to judge? Democracy does not work everywhere, of course, and there were a lot of things to admire. And at least the lavish extravagance was spent on a capital city rather than just the personal excesses of the leader, as in some other countries.

And Berdimuhamedov, it turns out, is something of a reformer. A former dentist, he became President in 2006 after the death of Saparmurad Niyazov, President since independence from the Soviet Union in 1992. Niyazov’s excesses ranged from the bizarre - renaming the days of the week after friends and family members, banning men from growing beards, and news reporters from wearing make-up when appearing on television - to the dictatorial closing of all hospitals in the country outside of Ashgabat.

It’s all relative, very relative, but his successor has toned down much of this, and his emotionless portrait is only plastered on most buildings rather than every single one as Niyazov’s was a decade ago.

Another key difference between the two, and the reason for our visit, is Berdimuhamedov’s embracing of sport as a tool for greater progress. The Ashgabat Olympic Complex where we were based was stunning. Those much more experienced in sporting events than me were calling it the greatest Olympic Village they had ever seen, and the velodrome where it is hoped the 2017 World Cycling Championships could be held is billed as the largest in the world.

As well as that a series of venues, shopping centres, hotels, restaurants, cafes, shops, consumer services and a car park are being built, while the Athletes’ Village itself will have 12,000 beds, and an 800-room “luxury” media hotel is also being developed.

It’s sport on the scale of China, Qatar, and Azerbaijan perhaps, but not too many others. When explaining all of this to my taxi driver when I landed back in London, he said with the bluntness those in his trade are renowned for: “No countries like that should be allowed to host sport, we’re only encouraging them by going there”.

A principled point but one which is not really valid today. With less and less countries prepared to bid for and host sporting events, certainly on the sort of scale seen in Ashgabat, taking the high-horse is not an option, and sport must stimulate all the interest it can get. And this behaviour in encouraging places like Turkmenistan is certainly no worse than business and political leaders coming over with platitudes and gifts in return for trade deals…

The danger, so far as I can see, is pricing other countries out of it. Agenda 2020 seems to be doing a good job to avoid this in an Olympic sense, but at an Asian-level, this is certainly a major challenge.

Sri Lanka has been stripped of the Asian Youth Games in 2017 due to being unable to organise it, with Jakarta now hosting them as a test event for the following year’s Asian Games. But the Indonesian capital is experiencing problems of its own, and concerns remain over its finances for a Games spread over two islands separated by a 45 minute plane-flight.

Then there is Vietnam, well behind schedule for next year’s Asian Beach Games after withdrawing from hosting the Asian Games themselves last year. This leaves China, the sole bidder to host the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou and one of those few countries with a bottomless well of resources and finances.

Is the scale of all of these Games becoming too big for many middling countries to cope?

Asia is doing a lot right, it is hosting the next three Summer and Winter Olympic Games after Rio 2016 for starters, and OCA boss Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah denied this was an issue when I put it to him after the General Assembly.

“Many cities were interested in bidding”, he explained, and several are interested already for 2026, but the “Asian tradition” is to favour one pre-meditated choice over a convoluted election-process.

This is something to think about nonetheless, but I certainly don’t blame them embracing places like Ashgabat and I feel that for all its shortcomings and sheer absurdities, the “coming-out” of the nation is a good thing for international sport, and hopefully it will gradually accelerate Turkmenistan’s wider development as well.