Driving to 'The Gate of Hell' and back

After crossing the border we stopped in Dashogghoguz uz, the capital of the northern province for lunch before embarking on the long and bumpy road to Darvaza in the heart of the vast Karakum Desert, one of the largest sand deserts in the world.

Our destination is the 'Gate to Hell', a gas crater that has been burning for over 50 years and one of Turkmenistan's most unusual and surreal sights - so they say.

It's a journey of 370 km, about a 5 hour drive based on current road conditions. The first couple of hours go by in relative comfort but after that ...
Never have we seen or driven along a road that bad. In fact, it's so bad, that cars and trucks are driving off-road to avoid the worst sections.

The road built in mid-1990s is mainly used for transit from Iran through to Uzbekistan. Normal people wouldn't even use it, they fly instead.
Our driver was telling us that in 2016, it was still possible to cross the desert from Dashoguz to the Iranian border close to Ashgabat (540 km) in four hours - driving as a maniac I guess - now it takes lorries over 24 hours to make the journey. The road hasn't been maintained since 2008 and was definitely not built for the 40t lorries crossing it daily.

After just over 5 hours of being shaken around and feeling slightly worse for wear 😵‍💫 🫨, we finally make it to the gas crater at Darvaza aka 'Gate to Hell'.

Before 'checking in' at our yurt camp in the desert, we have a look at the famous gas crater. It's rather underwhelming to say the least.

Apparently, the flames are now less than an third they have been and might disappear fully in the future, especially now that the Chinese have started to pump out the underlying gas field.

This crater, set in the middle of the desert, has a diameter of 60-70 metres and is about 30 metres deep and was formed when a natural gas field collapsed into a crater during gas explorations by Soviet geologists in early 1970s. Apparently, it got covered up by the Soviets - our guide compared it to Chernobyl - until it became clear that something needed to be done against the foul-smelling methane gas.

The decision was taken to ignite it with the expectation that it would burn for a matter of days or weeks. Well, more than 5 decades later, it's still going (sort of).

So after a quick walk around the crater, we go to our yurt camp for some rest while our guides prepare dinner.
Having sat for most of the day, we spend some time wandering through the desert marvelling at the sunset.

As soon as the sun sets, it gets cold in the desert so I am quite happy to go back to the crater after dinner. The heat coming up from there is just lovely.

We get bored pretty quickly and after trying my luck on some astro photography, it's time for bed.Read more