Inside Turkmenistan, the shadowy hermit state that’s slowly opening to tourists

Surreal and secretive, few people have been to the most otherworldly of the Central Asian states (Picture: Laurie Noble/Getty Images)

‘No more bad news, you can sleep well at night, and the palace of your mind will be bright,’ Damon Albarn croons on the new Gorillaz track, The Happy Dictator.

The satirical song, which critiques authoritarian control and the suppression of negative news to brainwash citizens into compliance, has an unusual origin story.

Albarn wrote it after travelling to Turkmenistan, a surreal Central Asian state where the ruling regime once decreed that people should think only happy thoughts under a policy of Read Entire Article