Trip on a crater of Darwaza in Turkmenistan

Darvaza gas crater.

Tours on natural sights of Turkmenistan.

"The name "Door to Hell" was given to the field by the locals, referring to the fire, boiling mud, and orange flames in the large crater, which has a diameter of 70 metres (230 ft). The hot pots range over an area with a width of 60 metres and to a depth of about 20 metres)"

Package plan tour on Turkmenistan.

The Darvaza gas crater is located at an altitude of 94.4 meters above sea level, 2.8 kilometers east of the Dashoguz-Ashgabat railway, 4.3 kilometers from the Dashoguz-Ashgabat highway in the Zaunguz Karakum, 72.3 kilometers from Damla village and 256 kilometers north and slightly east of Ashgabat in Ruhubelent etrap in the south of the Dashoguz velayat.
Darvaza is a mysterious place in Turkmenistan. "The Door to the Underworld", "The Gates of Hell". Imagine there is a desert all around and suddenly, among the sands in the ground, there is a huge hole with a diameter of 75 meters from southwest to northeast and a depth of 20 meters from which a flame bursts out.
The fire comes out of the ground and is divided into hundreds of burning tongues of flame, some of them reaching 10 - 15 meters in height. In 1971, not far from the village of Darvaz (Turkm. Derweze), Soviet geologists discovered an accumulation of underground gas.
As a result of drilling an exploration well, geologists stumbled upon an underground cavity (void), due to which the earth collapsed and a huge hole filled with gas was formed. The drilling rig with all the equipment and transport fell into the resulting hole, while no people were injured.
To prevent the gas harmful to people and animals from escaping, they decided to set it on fire. Geologists assumed that the fire would go out in a few days, but they were wrong. Since then, for 50 years (2021), the unquenchable torches of the underworld have been burning.
Nobody knows how many million (billion) cubic meters of the most valuable natural gas have been burned since then. This is the very heart of the famous Karakum desert, the name of which means "Black Sands", Darvaza - "door". Except for shepherds and camels, there is no one here - for tens of kilometers around.
The nearest village of Erbent, where 200 shepherds and road builders live, is 105 kilometers away. “Nothing caught in this failure can get out, any living being is doomed. At night we watched hundreds, and maybe thousands of birds circling over this fiery abyss, some of them fall down into the crater and there you can see how they rush between the tongues of flame, the smell of burning gas interrupts the smell of burnt feathers.
Thousands of insects crawl into the warmth and light - beetles, scorpions, phalanges and other inhabitants of the desert, which also fall down attracted by the heat and light. There are no fences, railings or anything like that, so you have to be extremely careful not to fall down! "
“Nearby, very close to the road, there are two more similar failures of similar origin. These craters do not burn, the gas pressure is much weaker here. At the bottom of one of the craters there is bubbling liquid mud of a light gray color, at the bottom of the other there is a steep brine of an amazing turquoise hue.
In the southeastern part of the Darvaza crater gas is the Kyzylchulba hill 124 meters above sea level. The hill is located 600 meters from the gas crater Darvaz, from which in the evening and at night opens an amazing and unique view of the crater Darvaza ”- (Alexander Petrov).
Geographic coordinates of the gas crater Darvaza: N40 ° 15'08.84 "E58 ° 26'22.64"

Darwaza gas crater in Turkmenistan.