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LOCALS call it the Door to Hell, a giant burning pit that has spit out angry flames for more than 40 years, casting a yellow-orange glow into the evening sky.
“It takes your breath away,” said Gozel Yazkulieva, a 34-year-old visitor from the Turkmenistan capital Ashgabat. “You immediately think of your sins and feel like praying.”
Few foreigners have seen the crater in the heart of the Karakum, one of the world’s largest deserts, although Turkmen authorities are hoping to change that as they seek ways to bolster tiny visitor numbers to the former Soviet republic.
Still one of the world’s most isolated countries almost a quarter-century after the fall of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan welcomes just 12,000 to 15,000 tourists from around 50 countries each year.
Tourism officials say the Door to Hell, also called the Derweze crater after a nearby village, could be developed into a key draw for adventure tourists.
The Karakum, or Black Sands, covers 80 percent of the Central Asian republic. In summer, temperatures soar to more than 50 degrees Celsius, while in winter they plunge to minus 20 degrees Celsius.
There are no road signs to the pit in a natural gas field some 270 kilometers north of the capital, but guides know where to turn onto a track leading to a fantastic view.
The phenomenon was the result of a simple miscalculation by Soviet scientists.
“Soviet geologists started drilling a borehole to prospect for gas at this spot in 1971,” said Turkmen geologist Anatoly Bushmakin. “The boring equipment suddenly drilled through into an underground cavern, and a deep sinkhole formed. The equipment tumbled through but fortunately no one was killed.”
“Fearing that the crater would emit poisonous gases, the scientists took the decision to set it alight, thinking that the gas would burn out quickly and this would cause the flames to go out,” Bushmakin said.
But they never did, and now serve as a potent symbol of Turkmenistan’s vast gas reserves, believed to be the fourth-largest in the world.
(SD-Agencies)
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