The Door To Hell - Turkmenistan's Crater of Fire

In a Nutshell: At the heart of Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert sits a crater of fire the size of a football field that’s been perpetually burning now for almost fifty years. Locals have suitably dubbed it the ‘Door To Hell’, officially it’s known as the Darvaza Gas Crater. It’s not volcanic, that’s not magma, in fact, this sinister flame pit was man-made and thought to be the result of a Soviet-era gas drilling accident, yet Turkmenistan has no official record. To those travellers who’ve defied all odds in having their visas granted to this closed nation, reaching the ‘Door To Hell’ is at the top of their list. I was no different, and on an overnight camping trip, I finally got to visit what camel spiders everywhere have been talking about for years. Departing Ashgabat, this is a photo essay covering my visit to the ‘Door To Hell’.

Without beating around the bush, watch the short video snippet (0.29s) below to see the ‘Door To Hell’ in all its glory. We camped beside it overnight, and I filmed this at 4am in the morning. It was a freezing desert night, but my friend and I had all the gas crater’s warmth to ourselves. A tough campfire to put out when we left, though!

door-to-hell-ak-altyn-president-portrait-horse-turkmenistan — Our day began at the Ak Altyn Hotel in Ashgabat, a foreigner-friendly premier hotel that’s home to both the British and German embassies. The lobby, alike most of the city, was loaded with artistic displays fixated towards current dictator Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Turkmenistan’s ‘protector’. Here he is riding a horse. Since assuming power in 2006, his time has been spent dismantling golden statues, portraits and literature from the personality cult left behind by Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-proclaimed ‘Turkmenbashi’, and replacing them with his own. I urge you to research Niyazov, he was a nutcase who banned everything from public smoking to opera music.

door-to-hell-ashgabat-shopkeeper-snacks-turkmenistan — After check-out, we stocked up on goodies for our venture into the desert. This meant snacks and alcohol, a mix of local, Russian and Ukrainian product. Payment was cash only as international cards are useless in Turkmenistan, including at ATM’s, so every dollar I needed had to be taken into the country. Tight governmental control was ubiquitous, trickling down even to the average and mundane — this clerks badge indicates his registry and license to work for this particular store only, under the ‘Ministry of Trade and Foreign Economic Relations of Turkmenistan’. Cute hat, I must add.

There’s dune-bashing to reach the ‘Door To Hell’, so we needed a 4WD. But that wasn’t the only thing we needed. For foreigners, independent travel outside of Ashgabat is banned, so guides were mandatory. However, this isn’t as strict as in North Korea. Our driver’s car ended up being decked out in Turkmen carpet seat covers, this pattern is the ‘Teke’ and appears even on the Turkmenistan Coat of Arms. Turkmen are mighty proud of their rugs, there’s even a ‘Ministry of Carpets’ just a few blocks away and ‘Turkmen Carpet Day’ is marked in calendars as an annual national holiday.

I’ll save the detail for another post, but this is Ashgabat, an architectural extravaganza of gilded white marble embellished by manicured green boulevards. The result is a sanitised, inefficient ghost town and frankly, the strangest city I’ve ever visited. Between buildings inspired by either the USSR or the latest NASA space shuttle, you’ll find ideological monuments, gleaming statues, ceremonial guards, endless military, police and…surveillance cameras. Lots of them. Ashgabat is an authoritarian fairyland.

As we left the city, we passed the brand new Ashgabat International Airport, all 2.3 billion dollars of it. It’s shaped like a falcon…because falcons fly and you will too if you visit this airport — just as you’ll read if you visit Ashgabat’s book-shaped school. The airport itself is an eccentric absurdity, it caters to just a handful of airlines, a small domestic population relatively unable to travel, and a phantom tourist industry blocked by Turkmenistan’s own visa policies. When I flew in, other than cleaners and airport police, the place was empty.

Further out, dozens of tessellated residential housing blocks began to appear. More were in construction. As the government continues razing entire neighbourhoods in Ashgabat, all those displaced are given free housing similar to that pictured, or in low-rise Soviet-style apartment complexes. This has meant business and residential districts have been divided and polarised, giving the capital a distinct ‘lack of community’ feeling.

A couple of minutes later, and this was our reality now. Unforgiving desert. Pictured is a part of Turkmenistan I found particularly fantastic — the hitchhiking culture. While preoccupied constructing indoor Ferris wheels, the government has forgotten to devise an efficient public transport system. The result? Everyone is a private, unofficial taxi. It was hassle free — usually, you’d be picked up by the first car, it cost 2-5 Manat (0.56-1.4 USD) and appeared mutually safe for men, women and children.

So, back in Ashgabat, we’d noticed a police-issue jacket, bag and baton lying in the boot of our driver’s car as we stowed our luggage, so we joked between ourselves that he might be an off-duty police officer. He spoke no English, and we spoke no Turkmen nor Russian so we couldn’t be sure. Either way, he seemed chill enough. That was until our first pitstop, where he unveiled a taser and proceeded to zap indiscriminately at other drivers, cackling to himself behind dark sunglasses like a maniac. Crazy bastard. Oh, and yes, he was a cop.

door-to-hell-sergey-krowyakow-london-olympics-2012-turkmenistan — Another of our drivers was Sergeý Krowýakow, Turkmenistan’s only male swimming Olympian at the London 2012 games. Yep. Why he was our driver…your guess is as good as mine. Turkmenistan is weird. He swam the 100m men’s freestyle and didn’t get out of the heats, but honestly, I think he was more proud of the photo he took together with Michael Phelps. Fun fact: Turkmenistan has never won an Olympic medal.

door-to-hell-desert-road-lagoon-turkmenistan — This is about as scenic as it got in the Karakum Desert. It’s a dull vista that makes up over 80% of Turkmenistan and inconveniently, the ‘Door To Hell’ was at the dead centre of it. The paved motorway pictured is the only road linking Ashgabat (south) with Dashoguz (north) — luckily our fiery destination was just a 7km off-road detour from the tarmac about four hours in. An interesting tidbit: The motorway’s name is ‘Atamurat Niyazov’, the name of Turkmenbashi’s father. During his dictatorship, he had a habit of renaming towns, roads and landmarks to reference himself and his family. He even went as far as renaming the days of the week and months of the year, which was eventually overturned after his death.

door-to-hell-camels-herd-road-turkmenistan — It was commonplace to see herds of wild camels roaming freely. These ships of the desert blindly followed the motorway chewing their cud and didn’t show great respect to passing traffic. We also saw butchered camel carcases lining this same motorway, so it appeared that for drivers this feeling was mutual.

door-to-hell-desert-village-motorcycle-turkmenistan — Similar to Pyongyang in North Korea, Ashgabat is Turkmenistan’s showcase city, the totalitarian playground where the lion’s share of state funds are invested in gold-trimmed air conditioned bus stops. Rural Turkmenistan, as we began to catch a glimpse, couldn’t have been more different. Roads were sand; buildings were in tatters, rubbish was used as makeshift fencing, metal scrap and rusted car bodies littered properties and everyone had a tied up camel in their backyard. It’s hardly brochure Turkmenistan.

door-to-hell-local-family-lunch-turkmenistan — It was a 4-hour drive, so for lunch, a local family catered for us in their desert village home. Freshly baked flat bread (çörek), fried dough (pişme), meat/vegetable soup (shurpa) and lamb pilaf (plov). The family was fun, bubbly and happy to have us. This isn’t ‘formal’ or ‘special occasion’ dress, by the way, this is what women all over Turkmenistan wear in their daily life. Bright, decorated and flamboyant with matching headscarves and, for the older generations, gold-capped teeth. This certainly put a spark into street photography.

door-to-hell-police-checkpoint-turkmenistan — Police checkpoints were everywhere. I know it’s a police-state, but the sheer number of brib– I mean, law-enforcement officers was unbelievable. Trucks, tankers and 4WD’s appeared to be targetted, but these checkpoints enforced a stop to all vehicles (and it was wise to turn off your car radio) before being waved through. Unless, of course, your driver was an off-duty policeman, in which case he did the waving, and our convoy would keep going. If any of us were flagged over, our driver would get the call and make a u-turn to sort out the ‘mistake’.

By now we were over 200 kilometres into the desert, and 1 Litre (0.26 US Gallons) of Unleaded 95 was still just a flat 1 Manat ($0.28 USD). This price puts Turkmenistan among the cheapest nations on earth to fill up your tank (after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Algeria). It used to be a whole lot better too, a Presidential Decree entitled all citizens to a free monthly 120L of petrol until Berdimuhamedow stripped this benefit in 2014 ruling it unsustainable.

door-to-hell-camel-desert-turkmenistan — We were getting close now. Somewhere out there in the sandy monotony lies the ‘Door To Hell’. There are no mountains nor hills, no trees, no rock formations and no landmark dunes. Close your eyes, spin around and you’re suddenly lost in the desert. Waiting till nightfall would make finding it easier, just spot the orange glow and hike a few hours — however getting back may be a different story. I hope you have a compass and aren’t afraid of camel spiders.

door-to-hell-darvaza-water-crater-turkmenistan-1 — About now is when I realised that there’s actually three gas craters in Turkmenistan, and we were visiting them all today. To maintain climactic order, we visited the most underwhelming one first, which was the ‘Water Crater’. As advertised, it was a crater of murky water still actively bubbling from gas leaks hit by the Soviets five decades ago. You can see the highway directly behind our cars, and this accessibility to the crater has led many people to stop by and turn it into a mini-trash vortex of plastic bottles.

door-to-hell-darvaza-water-crater-edge-turkmenistan — One thing I did find impressive about the ‘Water Crater’ was its scale. It’s massive, but really, an otherwise uninspiring eyesore on the desert so we moved on pretty quickly after we got the whole ‘throwing a rock into the water’ thing out of our system. We were told this crater was the first to occur in 1969.

door-to-hell-snake-turkmenistan — Be careful where you tread in the desert! I almost stepped on this little guy. I haven’t been able to ID him, so are there any snake experts out there that can tell me how close I came to an excruciating death? EDIT: It’s a totally harmless Psammophis Schokari (aka Schokari Sand Racer), thanks J.R. Johnson in the comments for the expertise!

door-to-hell-darvaza-mud-crater-turkmenistan-1 — Next up was the main event’s supporting act, the ‘Mud Crater’. This crater even had burning patches to fire us up. Pun intended. Interestingly, this one had only been set alight recently in 2012 after being created way back in 1972 — its name is a legacy to the bubbling mud swamp in its centre. This was far more audible than you’d believe, it was like standing beside a bubbling pot, just with a pungent smell of gas.

door-to-hell-darvaza-mud-crater-turkmenistan-2 — You can see the mud rippling here, producing small clay craters upon bursting. This will go on until the methane below runs out…and nobody knows when that is.

door-to-hell-motorway-turnoff-turkmenistan — It wasn’t much further before we arrived at our turn-off to the ‘Door To Hell’. You can blaze your own trail if you’re feeling adventurous, but this dusty path just shy of the military checkpoint will make your life easier. ‘Bon Voyage!’ in Turkmen on the sign ahead denotes this to be no ordinary checkpoint, you’d be crossing into Dashoguz province, a ‘no travel zone’ and a restricted area requiring a special government permit that you won’t have. Try to forget this fact as the trail bypasses these formalities. Don’t wave. Anyway, for those who’ve found this article and are now contemplating a visit to the crater illegally on their transit visa, turn-off coordinates are 40°11’39.3″N 58°24’47.1″E. You’re welcome.

After popping beers with his seatbelt, discharging tasers and irresponsibly scaling sand dunes to a soundtrack of underground Russian hip-hop in hot pursuit of Soviet pits of hell, we began to accept our driver as a certified Turkmen badass. Unfortunately, just before arrival, he lost a bit of credibility here. (For those finding this hard to see on mobile: Avril Lavigne – Complicated)

door-to-hell-darvaza-desert-road-turkmenistan — It was 7km of sand out to the crater, here is the last stretch. The path may look obvious, but it’s reaching this point that’s tough. On Google, the top related blog article is entitled ‘4 ways to **not** visit the door to hell’, a tale of two that had tried and failed miserably, and the stories out of the Mongol Rally usually wrap up with a night bogged under the stars. You could argue that knowing the way takes away from the overall experience, but I’d counter and say I’d rather see the ‘Door To Hell’ now than go through the Turkmenistan visa process again.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-1 — Without further ado, I present the ‘Door To Hell’. Darvaza Gas Crater. This was my first shot of the site, and my initial impression was that it looked like an impact crater from a meteor strike. Gas prospecting gone wrong, however, is the accepted explanation: Soviet engineers in 1971 bit off more than they could chew, drilling and hitting a gigantic underground gas cavern which then collapsed, forming a sinkhole and sucking the entire drilling rig into it. But nobody knows for sure. The Soviets allegedly concealed the extent of the disaster, leaving no paper trail, not even an incident report. As for fatalities? The official line is that there were none. But how we ‘know’ this, I am unsure.

Corroded remnants of the drilling rig still remain on the crater’s rim. As for why the crater’s on fire? Those same Soviets set it alight. Strategically. Not because they’re Satanists, but because they wanted to quash the massive amounts of methane and other potentially toxic traces of natural gas left billowing out of control. Darvaza village was nearby, after all. They predicted two weeks until the reserves below will have combusted…and here we are fifty years later still watching it burn! A slight rounding error.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-me-edge — My face almost melted off taking this photo. The crater’s heat was brutal, the afternoon sun made it worse, and every now and then a gust of wind would force me to run for the hills. Imagine the sweeping heat that hits you when opening the oven, except far hotter, over your entire body and without being able to step away. Being this close to the crater isn’t dangerous, methane gas isn’t toxic, but it does displace oxygen, so extended visits to the rim made it difficult to breathe, and you’d walk away with mild dizziness or a headache. For these reasons, I (unfortunately…) couldn’t place my sleeping bag by the edge for the night.

door-to-hell-darvaza-day-shadows-turkmenistan — We struck this pose many, many times. Curiously, the ‘Door To Hell’ didn’t feature in any government-issued tourism pamphlets, and locals outside of the immediate principality had either never heard of it, or never visited. It was hard to tell whether Darvaza Gas Crater was Turkmenistan’s leading tourist attraction or a concealed national embarrassment. I’m still unsure. In 2004, Turkmenbashi ordered the nearby village of Darvaza to be bulldozed, citing that “it was an unpleasant sight for tourists”, which hinted at his consent for more international visitors, however, Berdimuhamedow has since ordered the crater be filled and closed in 2010. Fast forward to 2016…the pit still exists, and you can still visit.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-1-2 — The inferno of flames venting from the centre is thought to be where the drilling rig punctured into the cavern. This has formed a ‘natural’ and everlasting industrial gas flare you’d usually see atop offshore oil and gas wells for controlled combustions.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-2 — This is the only remnant of the collapsed drilling rig still sitting outside the crater’s rim. It’s thought the sinkhole swallowed and buried everything else that was above it.

door-to-hell-darvaza-fire-closeup-turkmenistan — If you’re under fifty, this fire has been burning longer than your lifetime. Stomach that. Methane gas is both colourless and odourless, and no smoke is emitted, so it gave the illusion of combusting out of thin air. There are thousands of these methane spot fires scattering the pit — such strange conditions even led to a scientific expedition by National Geographic in 2014 to investigate the possibility of life inside the crater. A man and his two brass balls were lowered to do what I’d describe as a Mars-walk to collect samples, and of course, because truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, evidence was found of bacteria that was ‘very comfortable living in those high temperatures’.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-3 — This gives you an idea of how ‘in-the-middle-of-nowhere’ you are at the Darvaza Gas Crater. It’s just hundreds of kilometres of nothingness beyond the horizon, the whole 360 degrees. As an unsuspecting, passing nomad, if you were to chance upon this ‘mirage’ you may begin to question your reality.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-4 — However, as an Australian, all I could fathom was that with a custom-made grate we’d have ourselves one monster of a barbeque. Snags for the entire province. Bunnings would be in dismay at such a wasted business opportunity.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-5 — By now, you may be wondering why steps haven’t been taken to either harness the crater’s energy or just extinguish it entirely. I too once tried to use logic, but then I remembered this was Turkmenistan. In all seriousness — it’s likely because they simply do not care. Turkmenistan has the fourth largest natural gas reserves on Earth, so an investment here at such a volatile site would be high risk, low reward. If extinguished, the gas wouldn’t stop, you’d have to find a way to cap every fissure within proximity of the site which would be expensive and inefficient. And, without that investment, dousing it would be counter-intuitive. Burning the natural gas is preventing its toxic components from lingering and hinders the methane’s potential as a greenhouse gas. It also looks damn cool at night.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-day-6 — As mentioned, the fumes spilling out weren’t toxic, but we wanted to breathe properly, so our wild desert camp was set up about 200 metres away. If you hadn’t guessed already there are absolutely no facilities, so the landscape you see here doubled as our toilet. We were advised not to venture too far unless we wanted an encounter with a camel spider.

door-to-hell-desert-wine-sunset-turkmenistan — As the sun went down, out came the locally produced beverages. We’d had our fair share of vodka and cognac, so Turkmen desert wine was the next on our plate. It was quite tasty. I’d also managed to (finally) track down some ‘President Cognac’, which had a portrait of Turkmenbashi, the ‘Leader of all Turkmen’ on its label. His personal brand! He can keep it.

door-to-hell-darvaza-sunset-turkmenistan — Our first ominous taste of what the ‘Door To Hell’ had in store for us after nightfall.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-night-1 — What a sight. This is what we came to see, and frankly, it exceeded expectation. There’s part of the experience here that I just cannot convey to you in photos; it’s the heat, the smell, the sound and the sheer isolation within the Turkmen desert. By night, the ‘Door To Hell’ truly shatters your senses — not something I ever anticipated from a man-made attraction. Like stunned mullets, we stood awestruck to its mesmerising flames for what felt like hours.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-night-2 — There’s no restrictive fencing at the ‘Door To Hell’, so you can get up close and personal. I must say, it did strike me how blasé we all became to the obvious risks. The edges were nothing but dry mud, and you could see it crumbling under your feet, yet taking that photo just a tad closer remained almost a magnetic enticement. Falling in would truly be horrendous, a painful death by asphyxiation, slowly cooked by the flames as the sounds of those panicking above are drowned out by its roar. You’d be helpless. I asked, and apparently no tourist has fallen victim, but there was an urban myth of one local who wasn’t quite so lucky.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-night-3 — In saying all that, here’s me sitting out on what they’ve nicknamed the ‘Diving Board’, a section of the hardened mud rim that juts out just far enough for you to feel like the crater is your bitch. As for the name? There’s an alternative theory. As the only light and heat source at night, animals are naturally attracted to the crater. It’s been said that camel spiders, seduced by its warmth, will approach and plummet to their deaths like a scene out of an apocalyptic, arachnid remake of the movie ‘300’. The stuff of nightmares, I tell you.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-night-4 — The glow can be seen for tens of kilometres, and as the temperature drops by night, the entire crater appears to breathe an eerie steam that’s perfect for dramatic photography.

At a distance, it appears as if the earth has switched on a spotlight. The crater’s glow was accentuated without any light pollution nearby.

Tainted by a childhood of playing Doom and Diablo, I half-expected to face off against a horde of demonic minions or an Act boss here.

door-to-hell-darvaza-turkmenistan-night-me-edge — Fresh off our guide’s thunderous Turkmen rendition of ‘Hotel California’ on his guitar, we all sat on the scorching rim with our legs dangling and partook in what we all failed to deduce was a bad idea: sinking lots of vodkas. Vodka cranberry in a plastic cup surrounded by those who’ve similarly decided that inhaling methane isolated in Turkmenistan is the best way to spend their vacation time. Does it get any better?

By 4am everyone else had gone to bed, so a friend and I kicked up our feet next to the campfire, watched the stars and finished the vodka. The crater’s dancing flames were truly hypnotising. I’d never wanted a bag of marshmallows so badly. But even then, I’d have needed a very long stick, and there aren’t many trees around…to say the least.

door-to-hell-tent-morning-turkmenistan — I did eventually get to bed, but there was little time left for sleeping. On the bright side, I did get to enjoy a Karakum Desert sunrise!

door-to-hell-sleeping-morning-turkmenistan — The night really was freezing, quite literally, it got to below 0°C, so some of us migrated to somewhere a bit…warmer…to thaw out and rest.

One last photo finalised my pilgrimage to the ‘Door To Hell’. We left, but the crater continued to burn. Nobody knows for how much longer. It could be gone tomorrow, or it could last one hundred more years, either way, Darvaza Gas Crater has a finite lifespan seemingly at most threat from an unpredictable President. Ironically, I found that in this nation brimming with ideological monuments, the ‘Door To Hell’ may just be the most sincere of them all, a striking shrine to Turkmenistan’s real leader, their natural gas reserves, and the culture of frivolous wastage that’s followed.

Bonus:

door-to-hell-carwash-ashgabat-turkmenistan — We had one more ultra special task on our list before our return to Ashgabat: Washing our car. Why? Driving a dirty car in Ashgabat is illegal. Seriously. It’s actually an enforced law too, the police have a watchful eye, and you’ll be fined. This, plus the recent ban on black car importation into Turkmenistan surely makes it difficult for the first world anarchists out there!

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J.R. Johnson Reply

November 28, 2017 at 4:55 am

Elliot, great photos! Especially the close-up of the Psammophis Schokari (aka Schokari Racer) which is a very fast non-venomous snake. You probably came closest to death when you jumped from seeing it suddenly next to you. The big eyes and lack of triangular head give it away.
Your pictures and descriptions make it sound like a definite place to visit. Were you on a rise or did you manage to smuggle a drone in to take those last pictures?
- Elliott Reply
  
  November 29, 2017 at 12:19 am
  
  Hi there! Finally, someone has ID’d this little guy! Thank you. It’s reassuring that he is as harmless as he looks. I was under the impression snakes were long gone after feeling ground vibrations as you approach, so it was quite a shock to see this fearless fellow almost wear a footprint. I have updated the caption of that photo with your expertise 🙂 Also, no drone, there is a conveniently located rise nearby. In one of the distance photos you can see the shadow of this rocky/sand mound. The view from up there really puts the isolation into perspective.
Gunn Tepstad Reply

May 11, 2017 at 8:57 pm

Very interesting, superb photos!
I will visit Turkmenistan this summer, and I do my best to prepare myself.
Fiona Reply

April 27, 2017 at 8:34 pm

Best website ever. You have just shown me that someone can take their passion of travel, mix it with some interesting local and historical adventuring, add in some incredible photography and your audience just love it!

But the best thing? Your writing whilst informative, manages to just sneak in that unpredictable dry Australian humour when the reader least expects.

I’ll be back. Next time with popcorn.

The Door To Hell – Turkmenistan’s Crater of Fire

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