The Door to Hell

Ashgabat holds the record of having the most white marble buildings in the world. It lives up to it's description of the Las Vegas of North Korea. 

After a brief introductory tour and a visit to the National Museum we travel into the Karakum Desert to Davazar crater known as The Door to Hell. The journey is over 4 hours in a 4x4 on a very rough road. The story told here is that in the 70s Soviet engineers, looking for gas, set up a drill which collapsed exposing the crater and leaking methane into the air. They set it alight thinking it would burn off within a few weeks. It's still burning around 50 years later. Tonight was our first yurt camp which was only 200m from the crater.