Almost 300km north of Ashgabat through the Karakam desert, passed camels wandering haughtily along the road in pairs, alone or in small family groups completely oblivious to traffic, passed small flocks of multi coloured goats and long haired sheep, passed villages built on sand, dunes reminiscent of Australia. A shocker of a road followed by a bumpy 8 km drive through sand dunes and we came upon it. A huge burning crater!
This is a big crater!
Truly awesome in the extreme! Billowing heat rising skyward in a wall of shimmering heat-haze searing, scorching from metres away.
Near the top of the hill in the centre you might be able to make out some people. They are waiting for the sun to set.
A great gaping hole of fire and searing heat out there in the middle of nowhere. I got as close as I dared but when the wind changed direction slightly it was enough to singe your eyebrows.
This is a natural gas site that went wrong in 1964, the end result being a crater of continuously burning gas, flames licking and leaping out of rocks, rubble, earth and sand, blackening and scorching the sides of the crater.
Cars came over the sand dune, as we had, and looked like they might just drive straight into the crater. You wouldn’t want your brakes to fail - there are NO safety barriers out there!
A desolate place but rather magical in the particular way that vastness and isolation can conjure. Silence but for the sound of wind rushing passed your ears or the roar of fire close to the crater where jagged edges draw you hypnotically closer to peer into the fires of Hell. It generates that shuddering feeling of fear and riveting fascination simultaneously. And do you know they found life down there in the hellish centre! Have a look on YouTube National Geographic channel, search for Crater of Hell or Darvaza or Turkmenistan (I don’t have access at the moment).
A simple BBQ but with million dollar views over the desert .....
A great place for a bbq! We did just that or should I say our guide and driver prepared one for us while we wandered in the desert. Lindsay followed pippets fluttering and bobbing along the ground while I scrounged around looking at desert vegetation - small tufts of feathered grass, a desert herb with pretty creamy- green flowers, desert ‘dog’ or rat burrows and other stuff which grabbed me.
We had plenty of time because we wanted to see the crater after sunset.
As the sky darkened the glow intensified. Absolutely awesome and terrifying - magnificent!
Of course that meant that we got back to town after midnight rather shattered because of the hour but also the bone-jarring roads which we are accustomed to of course but .......
Incidentally we stopped at two other places on the way there - one a flooded mine crater with gas still fizzing to the surface and the other a crater of plopping mud and fire. The wonders of this part of the world - just amazing!!
The first of the craters. A small one flooded but still hissing and fizzing with gas.
This abandoned gas crater still burns but also had plopping mud as the gas worked its way up through the wet earth.
Water in the desert! This is part of the drainage system from further south. They dig drainage channels around their fields so that irrigation water drains off rather than raising the water table. The slightly salty water is then piped north to the desert against a future need.
Central Asia and the Caspian region represent the most concentrated mass of untapped wealth in the world. It’s worth a visit! As a matter of interest we have managed to do this trip thanks to our wonderful travel agent, Bev Edwards, working with Sundowners Overland and the local agent in Turkmenistan, Ayan Travel - if you come you should ask for Ata as your guide. He us a walking encyclopaedia and a delightful attentive ambassador.
Next stop Mashhad, Iran ....... but first a break to collect my wits and absorb it all.
[To see my pix of this please go to www.flickr.com/photos/hwheat8pix/ and go to Albums and find ‘Darvaza Karakum Desert’.
Or go to Facebook.com/heather.wheat.925 ]
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