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Tagtabazaar
- Ekedeshik Cave Town
 Yekedeshik
- is a State historical and architectural reserve, located
225 kilometers from Bairam-Ali in the district of Tagta-Bazar.
Tahta-Bazar -is a district where once passed great caravan
routes from Iran, Khorasan. Yekedeshik -is a unique and
spectacular cave that doesn't have any analogues anywhere
else.
 The
word "Yekedeshik"-from Turkmen language means
"One orifice" because of it's only one entrance.
In the spring period one can see here open land covered
with lots of tulips and field mushrooms. The emergence
of this cave is a mystery and there are many versions
of how it appeared. According to one of them cave was
dug by the legions of A. Macedonian army. As a consequence
people used the cave as a dwelling. Inside the cave there
are blocs of rooms similar to modern ones where one can
see bedrooms, kitchens and others. The cave consists of
two floors. On the lower floor people collected water
for their needs. There are 44 rooms and the cave is still
under archeological excavations to nowadays.
 The
cave has been carved by of axe-like tools in the rock
of sandstone. A straight, 37 meters long corridor comes
up against niche which resembles an altar. On the right
and the left there are rectangular rooms and one of them,
almost quadrate in plan (3,2X3,3 m) has a spherical ceiling,
divided into four segments relief ribs and a dome, the
narrow drum of which is decorated with the ornament in
the shape of an arcade, and in the keystone there is a
cylindrical "skylight" with inserted a stylized
rose-window. The idea that Ekedeshik was a monastery,
has been suggested by S. Khmelnitsky. He reminds that
more or less organized complexes of artificial caves serve
in Central Asia as monasteries - usually of Buddhists,
sometimes of Christians. There are more reasons to regard
the cave erections of Tagtabazar as a Buddhist complex,
a great number of which remained in the neighboring Afganistan
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