Two short windows when the country is genuinely comfortable, and what the rest is like.
The climate is sharply continental and desert, so the annual range is enormous and the shoulder seasons are short. Practically all travel here fits into two windows.
**April and May.** The best time. Warm by day without being hot, the desert briefly green and flowering after the winter rain, the air clear enough to see the mountains. The Turkmen Horse Day falls at the end of April, and it is the one occasion to see Akhal-Tekes in numbers rather than one at a time.
**September and October.** The heat breaks, the Caspian is still warm, and it is the season of melons and grapes. Plenty of people think autumn beats spring: fewer visitors, and food worth making a separate journey for.
Summer — June to August — means forty degrees and more by day, steadily and without relief. You can travel, but the programme has to be built around the heat: an early start, a long break in the middle of the day, sightseeing towards evening. The ruins of Merv at two in the afternoon in July are a bad idea, not a test of character.
Winter is milder than people expect but windy and uncomfortable: around freezing, sometimes below, and open ground offers nothing to shelter behind. The desert and the canyons look bare.
And separately: **the desert is cold at night all year round.** You need something warm even in July — the first thing forgotten by anyone packing for Darvaza.