What are the most mysterious countries?

There’s a country at the edge of Europe that feels like time stopped in the 80s. Literally. People from Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova that declared independence in 1991 but that no one else recognizes, cannot cope with the fact that the Soviet Union ceased to exist 25 years ago.

They try as hard as possible to live Soviet-style: their flag still includes the hammer and sickle, their secret services are called KGB, their official language is Russian, there are Lenin monuments everywhere, and their currency is the ruble.

Its people want to be either independent or part of Russia, whose army is heavily present in the territory.

Transnistria is known for its large black market, organized criminality and drug smuggling, but the main reason why people are discouraged from visiting is the rampant police corruption.

Officers see the very few tourists (10,000 people visited Moldova in 2015 – I can’t even imagine more than one thousand bothering to travel to Transnistria) as easy targets, so they find whatever reason to steal money from them (for example, they could try to fine you if you cross the road outside of a zebra crossing).

Also, being a phantom country, your embassy won’t be able to defend you here. Still, walking in the streets is a completely safe and calm experience.

Apart from the safety concerns, the average tourist would see no use in visiting this region, as there are virtually no attractions. Tiraspol (the capital) is your average provincial city from the Soviet era, with concrete buildings and large avenues.

The rest of the region features two major (and just as uneventful) settlements, Bender and Rîbnița, and a lot of bare countryside. There are almost no places where to eat or stay, anyway.

If you really want to visit Transnistria, you can board on the train from Chișinău to Odessa and stop in Tiraspol. There, the local police will issue you a 10-hour visa that will allow you to spend the day visiting this lost and forgotten corner of the Soviet Union.

A somewhat subjective question, but I would argue that Turkmenistan is a good example of a very mysterious country.

It is relatively large (i.e. nearly 500,000 square kilometers) and located near the center of Asia at the cross-roads of civilizations and was once part of the ancient Silk Road.

It has huge oil and gas reserves, the second largest in the former Soviet Union, meaning it could be a wealthy petro-state akin to the United Arab Emirates or Azerbaijan. Yet, the most recent estimates suggest that it only had about 6000 international tourism arrivals in 2016. This is less than both North Korea and Eritrea, despite Turkmenistan being larger than both countries combined.

From 1991 to 2006, the country was ruled by Saparmurat Niyazov who named himself President for Life in 1999. He developed an intense cult of personality worship in the country by writing an autobiography called the Ruhnama which was meant to guide the philosophy and beliefs of the Turkmen people. In the Ruhnama, he argues that the text is divinely inspired. He erected a golden statue of himself in the capital city which rotated so that it always faced the sun.

All doctors in the country were required to swear an oath to the President which replaced the Hippocratic oath. He banned beards, and men growing their hair long. He banned dogs in the capital city of Ashgabat.

He replaced the Turkmen word “bread” with his mother’s name. He also closed all the hospitals outside of the capital city because he thought that people should have a reason to come see the capital.

Only 5% of the population has access to the internet and the only internet service provider is state-run. This means that the populace also has relatively little access to the outside world beyond the state-run media propaganda.

Since Niyazov’s death in 2006, the country has opened up somewhat. In particular, a new tourist area on the Caspian Sea has seen an increase in tourists although the area is heavily regulated and requires special visas and tourist permits to visit specific locations. Internet cafes are now legal allowing citizens to gain more access to the outside world.

The country is also no longer a one-party state and allows for other political parties. However, the most recent elections resulted in land-slide wins for the incumbent with vote shares exceeding 95%, leading some to question whether the results were rigged. And the new president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow is arguably just as bat-shit crazy as Niyazov was.

He demands that all citizens call him “The Protector”. He also removed Niyazov’s golden statue in an effort to get rid of the cult of personality, but then several years later he built his own golden statue of himself riding a golden horse on top of a 70-foot marble column.

He has also implemented strange and arbitrary bans like his predecessor, such as banning dark colored vehicles. Photography is restricted and an 11 pm curfew is enforced throughout the entire country.

Even more mysteriously, Berdimuhamedow might not even be alive. In July 2019, there were some reports that he had died, but Turkmenistani news media denied the claims and he later appeared at an economic summit.

Human Rights Watch states that the country is one of the most repressive in the world, closed off to any scrutiny, free media, or religious freedoms. The Ovadan Depe prison is considered one of the most harsh and brutal prisons in the world. The prison is so secretive that it is only possible to assess the living conditions based on satellite imagery.

The Turkmen people are said to be very hospitable, welcoming and warm. The food is apparently delicious and the country has many amazing sites and world-class history. Life is hard for many of the people, and many people who leave do not wish to return.

It remains an enigma. A country which is very difficult to enter requiring a difficult visa and a letter of invitation from a Turkmen national or tour agency. A myriad number of arbitrary rules and restrictions that could get you in trouble. And if the government suspects you are a spy, you may end up in one of the most harsh prisons in the world.

Eritrea is very similar to North Korea, except if you take away everything that makes North Korea interesting. It doesn’t have a weird cult of personality leader, it doesn’t have communism, or oil, or much natural resources really, it doesn’t have nuclear weapons, or pose as much of a threat to anyone, and its arch-enemy (Ethiopia) isn’t anyone important.

About half the population is in the military (even more than North Korea), there is a one-party dictatorship and discussion of politics is a bad idea for your health. Tourism is difficult (on a similar level to North Korea) and journalism is seemingly banned (although some journalists have reported from there so maybe not), so there is not much information being generated about the place. It has the worst press freedom in the world — yes, just below North Korea in the rankings.

They really like cycling there though, it is their national sport.

Eritrea is mysterious because no-one talks about it even though it has much the same conditions as North Korea.

I can no longer support the last statement (in italics). After some push-back in the comments I have looked further into the matter and as always these things are not so simple.

Satellite TV tuned to foreign networks is ubiquitous and as with just about every country that doesn’t have much a national football league the English Premier League is closely followed. The internet probably doesn’t need to be censored because it is extraordinarily slow.

The economy does exist in Eritrea although you might be forgiven for not spotting it on a first glance. It is based on agriculture, remittances, and the Bisha metals mine which is apparently quite a well run operation managed by a Canadian firm that employs Eritreans in good conditions.

Eritrea was an Italian colony before WWII and they went wild with Art Deco architecture in the capital Asmara, which earned the city a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation recently.

Above: A now closed down petrol station in Asmara. (AFP)

There are nine ethnic groups and half the country is Muslim and the other half Christian, but there seems to be no internal strife. The ominous threat of much larger Ethiopia, from which the Eritreans fought for independence and, against all odd, won, probably has a lot to do with this.

The Eritreans seem largely free to do what they want so long as they don’t criticise the government, do their compulsory military service (which is highly arbitrary and can last longer than 10 years), and don’t leave the country. Illegal emigration is a big problem for the country.

However if you do leave the country and get a foreign passport you can seemingly come back to visit or stay so long as you have paid your taxes to Eritrea while you were earning money in foreign lands (a strange practice only otherwise found in the United States).

What is really the most mysterious country? It is not Eritrea and I don’t think you will find it elsewhere among the answers here. Eritrea was just the most mysterious country I thought I knew enough to write about (I was wrong, I didn’t know enough). I was well acquainted with all the other countries in the other answers precisely because they were “mysterious”.

The real mysteries are the ones you’ve never even heard of, I can’t list them because I don’t remember their names, but some that I know little more than the name of are Equatorial Guinea (I know where it is!), Suriname (they speak Dutch there, but it borders Brazil), Togo (a sliver of a country that used to part of one of the bigger Slave-, Gold- and Ivory Coast countries), and Turkmenistan (another one often compared to North Korea).

After consulting a map though I will take a stab that Guinea-Bissau is the most mysterious country in the world, I can’t write about it though because I know literally nothing about it.

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic or Western Sahara.

On most maps, the Sahrawi Republic looks like empty space, even a part of Morocco on some maps, but this region is more complicated than you may realise.

Western Sahara essentially is a colony frozen in time. It tried to become independent in 1975 when the rest of Africa became de colonised. However, after Western Sahara declared independence from Spain, Morocco claimed the region.

The people of Western Sahara, now called the Sahrawi Republic, have longed for proper independence, but few countries recognise them, so their sovereignty is limited.