Darvaza Gas Crater

DARVAZA, Turkmenistan — Halfway between Ashgabat and nowhere, the Karakum Desert opens up and starts to burn. The Darvaza gas crater is a pit roughly 70 metres across and 30 metres deep, ringed by sand, and it has been on fire for decades — hundreds of small gas flames licking the crater floor around the clock, bright enough at night to light the desert for travellers who have come hours out of their way to stand at the rim. Locals call it the Door to Hell. The government, which renamed it the "Shining of Karakum" in 2018, would rather you thought of it differently.

A legend with a shaky timeline

The story everyone tells goes like this: in 1971, Soviet engineers drilling for natural gas punched into a cavern, the rig collapsed into the hole, and, to stop poisonous gas spreading, they set the escaping methane alight — expecting it to burn out in days. It never did.

Documented fact is thinner than the legend. Soviet records are absent, classified, or lost, and local geologists have offered competing accounts: some say the collapse happened in the 1960s and the fire was only lit in the 1980s. Satellite evidence adds a twist: Landsat photographed the crater by October 1972, but thermal sensors saw no sustained fire until 1987–88, suggesting the flames may be younger than the famous 1971 date. Either way, by the time the Soviet Union fell, the crater was burning — and it never stopped.

The descent

In 2013 the crater got its most famous visitor. Explorer George Kourounis, sponsored by National Geographic, descended to the bottom in a custom aluminized suit with a self-contained breathing apparatus, collecting soil samples for the Extreme Microbiome Project. He found the crater floor crawling with methanogenic archaea — microbes thriving inside the hellfire, with DNA unlike anything in existing databases. His verdict: "a coliseum of fire."

A fire going out

The Door to Hell is, right now, dimming. In 2010 President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow first ordered measures to limit the crater's interference with nearby gas fields; in 2022 he ordered it extinguished outright. Turkmen authorities say the fire has been reduced threefold, with new wells drilled around the crater to capture the methane, and by 2025 visitors reported only scattered pockets of flame. Infrared analysis suggests heat output has fallen by more than 75 percent in recent years. Researchers caution, though, that the escaping methane — unburned gas leaking from the same system — hasn't necessarily fallen with it.

See it soon, and go at night: by day it is a pit; after dark it is still one of the strangest sights on Earth. Visiting takes a visa, a four-hour drive from Ashgabat, and a willingness to camp near a fire that may not burn forever.

Researched feature, not a firsthand report. The crater's activity is changing — confirm current conditions and local access before travelling.

Photographs are archival views and may not show current conditions.