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 50 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, this sinister flame pit was human-made and thought to be the result of a Soviet-era gas drilling accident, yet Turkmenistan has no official record.
Door to Hell is a 230-foot-wide crater in the middle of the desert near the village of Deweze. In 1971, a team of Soviet scientists set up a drilling platform looking for natural gas reserves. The rig collapsed, and fearing the spread of poisonous methane gas, the
researchers set the crater on fire hoping it would burn out in a few hours. That was more than 40 years ago.
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. 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.
The site is still burning, attracting hundreds of tourists every year, even though the country’s president ordered it to be filled in 2010. 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. Turkmenistan’s natural gas reserves rank fifth in the world, but a lack of international pipelines has hampered development efforts.
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.
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