Ashgabat and the Darvaza Gas Crater

I flew out of Nairobi and into Dubai, being greeted at 4am by a 37°C temperature with high humidity. With a climate like that there was no chance of outing outside much! So I spent my few days in Dubai resting in the air-conned hotel room, and getting errands done in the air-conned malls. It was even too hot to spend time in the hotel's outdoor pool! After spending 8 months in Africa, seeing Dubai gave me a bit of culture shock, everything was pristine clean, the roads were in perfect condition and everything seemed orderly. I'm pretty sure my jaw was hanging open as I rode the metro from the airport to my hotel passing sights such as the Dubai Frame and the Burj Khalifa.

I was only in Dubai for a few days before I flew to Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is one of the least visited countries in the world, with fewer than 10,000 tourists per year. Since the fall of the Soviet Union it has been ruled by oppressive totalitarian regimes under undemocratically elected leaders. It is an isolationist country with free movement and communication severely restricted, the only internet we could access was email. No social media was allowed, and you could Google something but if you clicked the links nothing loaded. As tourists you are only allowed to enter the country if you have a guide.

Turkmenistan also owns the world's 5th largest reserve of gas, making the regime very wealthy. The president chose to show this off by demolishing most of Ashgabat in the 90s and rebuilding it almost entirely in white marble imported from Italy. The city is made up of wide avenues lined with grand buildings made of white marble, and countless golden monuments. At night everything is lit up in bright neon colours until 4am, making it an impressive city to land in on a night flight. Many of these buildings sit empty, and for the size of the city you don't see many people or cars around giving it the feel of a ghost town in many areas. The cars that you do see are all white, because in the words of our guide, "having a white car is not a requirement, but a recommendation from the president".

On day one in the city we had a tour where we took in many of the monuments, the largest indoor Ferris wheel in the world, the wedding palace, and the Russian bazar where we tried the best melon I've ever tasted and had free samples of caviar. We also went to see a display of Akhal-Teke horses, a Turkmen breed of horses known for its speed, endurance, intelligence, and for their metallic sheen leading them to be known as Golden Horses. There are only around 6600 of them in the world, most of them being in Turkmenistan, and they are adapted for the harsh desert environment that they live in.

Next we got into some 4x4s and headed into the middle of the desert to the Darvaza gas crater, aka "The Door to Hell". This isn't actually a crater but is a sinkhole caused by some sloppy soviet engineering. There are a few of these sinkholes dotted around the desert and no one is quite sure exactly how they were formed. They are leaking gas and the Russians have admitted that they set the Darvaza crater on fire to try and burn off the gas supply. Fifty years later and the crater is still burning and is showing no signs of running out of gas supply yet. We camped in the desert and watched the crater burn for hours into the night. As they say, fire is caveman TV, endless entertainment!Read more