The 'Stans - Ashgabat to Darvaza (30 July 2019)

This was the most anticipated part of the trip for me - seeing Darvaza; the 'door to hell', the 'gates of hell'. It is the sort of place that no one really knows, yet everyone has seen on one of the '5 most extreme places in the world' articles littered on travel blogs. Had Darvaza not been in Turkmenistan, I may have missed it altogether. But Darvaza was a must-see for me.

Darvaza is quite literally a hole in the middle of an extremely remote desert. Having a guide and a Land Cruiser made the journey extremely simple - something that was priceless on a short trip. I'd read about people making it near to Darvaza by bus, however, traversing the final hour on foot through the sand of the desert in 40 degree heat is no joke.

The day started with some free time in Ashgabat. In the hotel reception, my guide found someone to translate to me. We did not want to get to the desert too early, because, well it is the desert. So I was told to meet the driver back in the hotel at midday. This left me a couple of hours to buy some fruit and stroll around the area near the hotel. I settled on pizza for lunch and made the most of the black market exchange rates.

At midday I met my guide and we drove to a shopping mall to pick up supplies for the overnight stay at Darvaza. The guide dropped me and told me he would be back in around 2 hours. Before heading to the mall, I walked to the exit and had a walk around Ashgabat, down to the site of the stadia built for the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, completed in 2017 and costing close to $5 billion.

Again the streets were empty and I could find no way into the stadium grounds. It looked as though it had not been used since the games in 2017. Suffering from near heat stroke, I walked back to the mall via an underpass and saw my first glimpse of the 'non-manicured' Turkmenistan. 3 or 4 Turkmen people sleeping and what looked like living in the underpass.

After an hour or so, I was back at the mall which happened to be the busiest place in Turkmenistan. Full of the young Turkmen hanging about; eating, shopping and drinking.

I located my guide and we did a supermarket dash of water, meat (lamb and chicken), vegetables, sweets, coca cola - the lot. We saved the best until last. A bottle of Turkmen vodka to cheers our arrival at Darvaza.

With the shopping packed, we started out 266km journey to the crater.

As we headed further outside of Ashgabat, we started to see the real Turkmenistan. Away from the white marble cladding, Turkmenistan is an impoverished nation with all the gas funds being filtered into vanity projects for the President - think the airport shaped like an eagle and the gold statue of Niyazov.

The road started out as a smooth Ashgabat highway and slowly degraded with every passing kilometre, until finally we were surrounded by sand.

From this:

 To this:

On the way we stopped at two other crater in the vicinity. Both craters were nothing but a tepid warm up act for crater number 3 - Darvaza. The crater itself is the consequence of an ill-judged Soviet attempt to dig for gas. In 1971, the drilling rig collapsed into a 70m crater. To avoid the gas releasing into the air, it was set alight and continued burning until present.

At a non-descript turning, the land cruiser hit a hard right and left what little road we had been driving on. Now we were off-road, tearing over sand dunes and heading further into the distance. After about 20 minutes, we start to see some signs of civilisation. A handful of huts dotted in the distance, at which point we got our first glimpse of the crater, and my word is it spectacular.

In the light of day, one can see a vast expanse just open up in the middle of the desert, right before your eyes. What is truly remarkable is how untouched the area is - just a few huts in site. No town, no shops, no hawkers - just the crater.

I meandered up a hill to get a better view of the crater and just sat and watched. After a while a group of four Dutch men followed the route I had taken and we started to talk. These guys were doing the Mongol Rally in a VW people carried come van. We exchanged routes and our different expectations of Turkmenistan, and then headed back down the hill to our respective guides. The Dutch guy said I was brave to be tackling Central Asia on my own More to come on the Dutch guys later...

Once I locate my guide, I sit down to a freshly prepared meal that he has been slaving over for the past hour, with a full table setting:

It turns out the Dutch guys were camping in the same enclosure as me. They did not receive the same hospitality that my guide had given me, and looked enviously on. After finish my chicken, I cracked open the vodka and offered it around to the Dutch guys in exchange for some warm beer. We sat around the camp, listening to techno and drinking until sunset, which is when Darvaza became magical.

At this point we decided to relocate around the campfire. We carried five chairs, beers and the subwoofer - still blaring out techno. We all sat at the edge of the crater, staring in awe as spectacular show in front of us.

At one point a group of tourists arrived to view the crater, they must have been passing by as they only stayed to complete a lap of the crater. One of them told us that we had ruined their experience with our drinking and techno.

When we had our crater back to ourselves, the Dutch guys produced gas canisters. They were inquisitive as to what would happen if dropped into the crater. So of course, into the crater they go.

I was expecting a large boom and singed eyebrows, but it turned out to be underwhelming. Just a quiet popping. We had ran out of beers and somehow, a man on a bike had turned up offering to get us beers for an extortionate price. With hindsight, not that extortionate consider we were in the middle of nowhere. 

At this point we called it a night and attempted to walk in a straight line back to our camp. This is a lot easier said than done, considering we were in a pitch black desert with no light sources. We struggled back in zig zags and somehow found our camp.

As I went to bed, I stared up at the sky and saw the most beautiful night sky I had ever seen. Every star was clear and seemed within reach.

I jumped into my tiny one man tent, while the Dutch Guys decided to sleep al fresco on a large mat.