Turkmenistan's giant burning gas crater

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The Darvaza gas crater was created about 30 years ago when a drilling rig collapsed into an underground cavern of natural gas. Someone made the decision to try and burn off the gas. They figured it would only burn for a few days, but it's been burning ever since. The crater is known locally as "The Gates of Hell".

We camped about 7km away from the crater and then took an old soviet military truck out to the site. We lucked out with the weather since it was a nice calm evening we were able to walk around the entire crater and we were able to get pretty close. It’s impressively huge and you could feel the heat when the wind changed direction. Too bad we forgot the marshmellows! The new government of Turkmenistan has pledged to extinguish the flames in the future since it's kind of an ecological disaster, so it may not be around much longer.

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Comments

[Grant schultz]

Phenom
Wow! I'd never heard of this.. The pics are amazing, keep'm coming. Good luck at your next port! Grant

[Savitha]

Amazing shots!