There’s pretty much only one thing to do in Turkmenistan and that’s go see the Gates of Hell. Or the Door to Hell. It goes by a lot of names. I kind of hate re-explaining it just because I’ve read about it so many times, but that’s me. About 3-4 hours north of Ashgabat is a city called Darwaza. Population 1 house. Back in the 70s the Russians were drilling for natural gas and hit a pocket of something so the whole drilling site collapsed. That’s obviously quite embarrassing (at least the Russians thought so?) so they decided to light the whole thing on fire thinking it would just burn itself out. Flash forward 45 years and it’s literally the biggest tourist attraction in the country. Now Turkmenistan doesn’t exactly love that, but I think they are coming around on the idea that people are driving through to see it.
Around 1pm or so we set off with a convoy for the fire pit. Up until this point in the trip we had seen a few bad roads, but not too bad. Today was a turning point. Back at home we have potholes, but that word doesn’t do the road justice. It’s a mine field. A manageable minefield, but a minefield nonetheless. It basically becomes impossible to go over 40 mph consistently. You might have a little stretch of 40 yards or so where you can drive comfortably, but it requires 100% focus because all of a sudden there could be a huge hole in the road, and even if you manage to swerve around that one you might swerve into 3 more. You have to scan the road right in front of you, 100 feet out and further, and simultaneously pick your path through all of it. The good news is that the roads become open game, in that lanes no longer exist. You drive where you can to not destroy your car. Half the time you either have to slow down to almost a complete stop, or get really good at straddling a big hole between the tires. It’s pretty gnarly. About an hour out from the fire pit we had our first wheel casualty. One big crater dented the shit out of our front right wheel. Wasn’t a huge deal, we have plenty of spares so we told the convoy to keep going and we’d catch up. There’s a silver lining to driving a crappy car and that’s having normal steel rims. They hold up way better than any stylish aluminum wheel and you can hammer them back in to shape, which is what we did. Didn’t even have to swap the wheel out, Mitch just banged on it for a few minutes and voila it was good to go.
I should also mention that Turkmenistan is hot. Really hot. Turkmenistan was so fucking hot that if you stuck your hand out the window while driving it was like having a supercharged hair dryer blasting your arm. It was 105 out that day, and that doesn’t factor in the heat coming off the tarmac or the wind. It was so hot that the airflow we had in the car from the windows being down would turn any brand new ice cold drink fresh tea hot in about 10 minutes. Having the windows down was almost not even worth having a little airflow. When you think about it driving to a massive fire in the middle of the desert is quite silly.
When we got to the area of the fire pit we were a little confused. Google maps has it listed as being in Darwaza, but as I mentioned Darwaza ended up being one house on a hill in the distance and a police checkpoint. We were also told that the crater is about 8 km off of the main road on a dirt path, so it’s not exactly easy to find. There was a local on a motorcycle at a place where you could pull off the road and follow a path to the base of a hill. A cottage industry has popped up around the crater, and that’s transport to and from. Rallyers past have warned against attempting to drive to the crater yourself. It’s a sandy road so you’ll have to maintain tons of speed on a path you’ve never been on in order to maintain traction. There’s also a giant hill you have to climb in order to even start down that path and on the other side is a gradually steep one you will have to traverse on the exit. So you can either attempt this yourself or pay a local with a 4×4 to take you there. They are very aware of the rally so they try and way overcharge you to get there. The first guy we asked drew in the dirt that it would be $60 for a roundtrip – for our car. No.
I should mention that we beat our convoy to there somehow. They had blown way past the entrance and had to circle back around and take another path to the base of the hill. Their path ended up being considerably sandier than ours, and while attempting it one car overheated and 2 got beached in the sand. Eventually everyone got to basecamp where we tried to formulate a plan. The main question was about whether or not we would camp at the crater and have someone get us in the morning. That unfortunately means leaving your car and that is not ideal. In general most people seem to be trustworthy and I would like to think the guys that try to get paid for transport would self police against thieves. Don’t want to ruin a good tourist spot.
So back to the transport thing. Our car is way too low and way too heavy to attempt the trip ourselves. We found a guy with a suburban that would take us to the hill that night and pick us up around 11 or so for $10 a person, which is a good price. While waiting for the guy our team had the brilliant idea to try to get there ourselves. By team I mean Ryan and Mitch, I was very very very against this plan. The risk reward didn’t make sense, and if we failed we were going to have to pay a local to tow us out, and then probably still pay someone to bring us there. Fuck logic though… Mitch tried and failed, Ryan tried and failed. The hill up was too sandy, which we already knew. A couple teams did manage to make it up in smaller lighter cars, but a lot of them paid a consequence for that later. NOTE TO FUTURE RALLYERS: PAY A LOCAL TO BRING YOU THERE. Our Danish friends made it to the fire pit, but on the way back the next day they destroyed their gearbox, knocked the engine loose from one or more of the mounts and destroyed their sump guard. They had to be towed out of Turkmenistan and into Uzbekistan, and it almost ended their rally. Another team in our convoy the next day had their gearbox shit the bed in Tajikistan – a new gearbox mind you – and they most likely damaged it on the way back up that hill in the morning. More on them later. Anyway, find a local and negotiate.. The guy we used grabbed an older friend of his with a second car and we brought 9 people to and from for $10 a person. He even had coolers full of beer in the trunk.
Pulling up to the crater is pretty surreal. The sun was almost set and you see the ground glowing in the distance. I don’t know that I can do it justice describing it, so maybe the pictures will help. To my knowledge it is the only thing like that in the world. It’s a very unique experience. Ryan cooked us a delicious and spicy spaghetti dinner. After that we took a few pictures, including for one of our badass sponsors The Truck Yard – the best bar in Dallas. Thanks again guys, we have so much stuff and the roof rack we bought with their sponsor money is awesome. We had a few drinks and headed back to basecamp to camp. The next day would be an early start to Uzbekistan.
