Here is the process you must follow when trying to get a ferry, since many people want this information and no one else provides it in one place:

1) Put your name on the list as soon as you arrive. The list is a little notebook sitting on the counter in the ticket office. If it isn’t there, ask around until someone gets it for you.

2) After the ticket window is opened (only when a ferry if fully loaded with cargo and the Captain’s lists arrive) you will be issued a coupon. This is NOT a ticket. This simply means you were on one of the lists and deserve a spot on a ship.

3) Take your coupon to a nearby window (unmarked, but you’ll see a line of other passengers forming) where two border guards will take your passport information for their exit records.

4) Go to the waiting room and get in line to go through customs. Despite being in line, the guards come out and point at who they want to process next, don’t be offended, they take the ones who look hard to process first.

5) Once behind the white wall that separates the custom’s process from the waiting room, give your passport again to the officer waiting at a table inside the door.

6) From there, guards will usher you to a conveyor belt where your bags will be scanned and searched, they will weigh heavy-looking bags.

7) Confusingly, you need to hand your passport to a man in a window-booth across from the conveyor belt, so put your bags down and prepare to wait; here you will be de-registering from Turkmenistan. They will take your registration card out of your passport, and give you an exit stamp. Do not leave the country without it or you will be denied entry to your next country.

Follow the green line on the floor out into the port. Guards will be stationed to usher you ever 100m or so to an awaiting vessel. Follow their direction.

9) Once you step onto a ship, you’ll be surprised at how rough the accommodations will be. Someone will demand your

passport and the passage fee. It is safe to give them your passport, they need them to log who is on the ship, and having done ferry services without any reported incidents of passport theft, it will be safe. The fee is supposed to be $90 USD per person, but we ended up paying $100, which they said we could pay or else get off the boat. The fee includes a room.

10) Follow someone on the ship to the passenger quarters. These usually contain a bunk (or up to four in a room) and a bathroom with no running water and petrified turds in a broken toilet. Don’t use your facilities, use the public ones down the hall. Don’t complain about your room because they are all equally bad. Even though you are boarded, the ferry might not leave for several hours. Don’t ask why, you’ll get no answer anyway as no one knows anything on board the ship. In the same vein, don’t bother asking when you’ll arrive or how long the journey is. Some take 12 hours, ours took closer to 24, others report 16-18 hour trips.

11) Once you arrive in Baku, the process to disembark and go through customs is very efficient, but a lengthily process. It took our group over four hours to go through customs, start to finish. As a tip, do not mention Armenia, as the two countries are at war. Once you are processed and in the country with your entry stamp, you can hire a cab or you can simply walk away from the docks into town.

Good luck!  By the way, the process is the same whether you are going from Turkmenbashi to Baku or vice versa.

As we depart Central Asia, we’re hit with a bittersweet feeling partially of relief and partly of sadness. Central Asia is like no other place on earth. Check logic at the door, and reason as well sometimes. The people are so vastly different from one another between the Stans that each place is like stepping into an entire new continent. Some are friendly, helpful and kind while others are greedy, rude and unethical. Its a region that will test even the most tried of travelers, and will cause even the most devout to swear. At the same time, it houses some of the world’s most cherished relics, a complex and interesting history and some of nature’s most comical and magnificent structures. While in Central Asia we composed a few top ten lists, here they are, as we say adieu:

Top Ten Illegal Things We Saw in Central Asia:

• Illegal money changers with counterfeit bills
• Marijuana growing on the curb in Tashkent
• Drug deal exchanges in Bukhara
• Transporting illegal substances across borders
• Prostitutes all over Central Asia
• Bribing guards on trains, border crossings
• Dangerous driving, with no regard for safety
• Hassling tourists, foreigners
• Cops patting down travelers for money
• Camping on protected ruins

Top Five Things you Don’t Want to Hear while on rusted, Soviet Chairlift:

• “Is that a broken chair down there?”
• “I think the two seater in front of us is seating four.”
• “Are you wearing Birkenstocks?”
• “Thats definitely wreckage of a chair lift down there.”
• “…and now we have to get back down the same way.”

10 Most Difficult Things to Achieve in Central Asia:

• Getting a napkin out of the booby-trapped holders
• Crossing the street without losing a limb
• Hailing a cabby who will charge in local currency
• Avoiding food poisoning
• Conversing with anyone about Russia
• Mentioning America without getting a response of “George Bush, Michael Jackson or Michael Jordon” in return
• Finding a road without potholes
• Avoiding manty (meat dumplings)
• Changing money across currencies
• Finding shoes in any size above women’s 8

Top Five Strange Things We Heard at a Restaurant in Central Asia:

• “That guy is playing with his belly button.”
• “Last time we ate here, we didn’t get sick!”
• “Try the tongue.”
• “That guy is combing his stomach hair….”
• “Even the waitress looks like shes about to throw up.”

Top Five Strange Menu Items in Central Asia:

• Lamp Shish
• Banana Spleen
• Corn and Cancer
• Language Beef
• Two Generations
• Frog Paws
• Cinnamon of my Youth
• Seafood pizza with Fruit
• Beer: The Goner
• Fish on a Shish

Top Ten Strange Sites We Visited:

• Flaming crater called the “Gates of Hell”
• Sarcophagus of Daniel (13m long)
• The nodding donkey monument
• Mosque honoring Turkmen Dictator, not Allah
• Russian Orthodox Church in the desert with skull and bones
• Downed MiG plane on display in someone’s yard
• Snake infested section of Caspian Sea
• Torture chamber and bug pit where condemned lived for years
• “Big Mac” restaurant on top of a mountain (lamb burgers)
• Petrified dinosaur eggs in the desert

Top Five Things We’ll Miss About Central Asia:

• Friends
• Bazaars (Push-Push in particular)
• Camels, EVERYWHERE!
• 2000 year old ruins…everywhere
• Constant oddities making you shrug and say, “its CA!”

Yup, Central Asia is a strange and mysterious place! We loved our time in the region, despite a few down times (being shaken down by cops, bad border guards and dishonest cabbys). We were lucky to be able to spend over three months in the Stans!

After two months in the arid deserts of Turkmenistan, it is time to move towards water. So we’re setting out sights on the infamous ferry to Azerbaijan from Turkmenbashi.

But as we move on across the Caspian Sea, here is a list of the top things we loved in Turkmenistan:

Merv – The ancient ruins of Merv were astonishing. The dry deserts have preserved the structures yet artifacts remain just sitting on the surface for anyone to admire. Herders push their sheep and camels through 2000 year old doorways and we luckily got to camp in the shadow of Alexander the Great’s biggest capture. Here’s more on Merv.

Darvaza – The flaming crater known as the “Gates of Hell” was a top spot for us, we loved it so much we went back a second time. Nearby, the bubbling mud crater and the languid water crater were also of endless amusement. Camping out next to a gaping, fire-filled hole in the middle of an empty desert is a strange and new experience we wont soon forget! Here’s more.

Nohur - This tiny village tucked away in the mountains between Turkmenistan and Iran houses some of the most ancient of traditions. People lived as they have for hundreds of years, and we sat on a family’s roof and listened to the call to prayer echo off the mountains. Here’s more.

Caspian Sea - Swimming with sea snakes in the Caspian and photographing rusted wreckage, walking around Turkmenbashi and exploring the surrounding area by 4×4- all fun and exciting adventures to be had along the shores of Turkmenistan. Here’s more.

Ashgabat - This city, with its glowing white marble palaces and attempt at building pine forests, will forever be the strangest place we’ve been. It is constantly amusing, and not a moment is left to boredom. Ashgabat is also home to some fun attractions like Independence Park (with a giant, glowing plunger) and the Cableway to the Iranian Border and my favorite, the Push Bazaar. Nearby is Nissa, Geokdepe and an endless dead pine-tree desert.

While there was much more that we got to see and experience, this is just a taste of why we loved Turkmenistan so much.

Darvaza Crater

Owing to a misplaced video of our last trip to the Darvaza crater, as well as an urge to try out new grilling methods and camping equipment, we bumped along the three and a half hour ride from Ashgabat to Darvaza last weekend. To set the stage, I pulled a muscle on the right side of my neck that morning, and was rendered useless. The idea of a multiple-hour, jarring ride through the outback seemed daunting, but the end goal of camping out again at the burning crater of the middle of the desert was reward enough to pack ice into a plastic bag and hold it against my neck the entire ride.

We arrived at 6pm, and not a moment too soon because a band of German travelers rolled into camp moments after our arrival, and were disappointed (to say the least) at encountering Americans in their territory. They huffed off into another section of the desert and set up camp out of sight. We set up camp in prime location overlooking the flaming crater just as a sudden desert downpour started. An hour later, a merry band of South Africans arrived and set up camp alongside our arrangement, and proceeded to cook their dinner. These four travelers (two couples) had traveled from the UK, and were heading home to South Africa via the Balkans and the Stans. They drove their own SUV, loaded with extra fuel cans and supplies, and were well equipped for camping.They were good fun to be around, and were as friendly a group as anyone could every ask for. Having come from the direction we’re heading, they gladly shared some travelers tips and hostel hints about Turkey and Georgia, where we will be in a few weeks. In turn, we traded information for hostels in Uzbekistan, which is where they were next setting their sights.

All tourists unaccompanied by a relative, must be in the company of a Turkmen guide, theirs was a friendly Ashgabat native named Max, who puffed away at his unfiltered cigarettes like a John Wayne character. That night, with all of the travelers safely inside their tents, he told us of a deadly black spider that stalks the desert floors at night. He finished his story and then rolled out a mat by the fire and fell asleep.

We awoke at 5:30 to watch the sun rise over the crater before cooking a hearty breakfast of steak and potatoes, coffee and an abundance of bread. The night before we had watched the crater get every more fierce-looking as the sky got darker, and we consumed a respectable amount of local beer in the process with our new African friends.We slept soundly, despite the constant rumble of trucks which were skirting the crater to lay a pipeline in through the desert, and in the morning, amid handshakes and waves, set off to visit a giant crater of boiling mud, which we had skipped last time. The crater was even larger than that of flames or water, and the mud boiled ferociously as we tossed rocks deep into the crater.

After much rock clinging amusement, we headed back for Ashgabat to visit the next best thing to the gates of hell: the Irish pub.

Asia Land Route Map

With a little help from our friends, OK a lot of help via their visa agent, we are finally all ready for onward travel to Baku, Azerbaijan.  About a week ago we decided it was time to get our travel documents in line so we went down the the Azerbaijan Embassy.  As we approached, we noticed a few dozen people standing around outside the embassy.  The doors were wide open and no one there was in uniform, so we proceeded to walk right into the embassy.

A man in khaki pants and a plain button down short-sleeved shirt put his hand on my chest after we were inside the courtyard.  Unfortunately, our Russian has not improved at all since we’ve been here and we did not understand a single thing he said except for the word “passport” – which sounds the same.  So I handed him my passport, he waved us out, and bolted the metal door leaving us, and all the other people stranded outside.  The first thing that came to my mind after that was, “Does he even work here?”

We shared a short laugh about our situation and as the smiles slowly faded from our faces over the course of the next several minutes,  we realized that this, like many things in Central Asia, was going to be a headache.  It is always what you least expect, and these little underestimations can do massive damage to your travel plans.  After standing outside the embassy doors for about 15 minutes, the man in the button down shirt poked his head out the door and handed my passport back to me, but did not say a word.  The door slammed again and the latch locked.  We waited another 15 or 20 minutes, rang the buzzer to no reply, and decided to leave.  Everyone else there looked like they had scheduled they entire day to be there.  One woman and her friend even had a small basket with her and they rolled out a blanket on the bench and had a picnic.

Our friends, who have helped us out significantly in Central Asia, passed our documents on to their visa agent to help expidite the process.  A couple days later we got terrible news that our visas had been rejected!  As our days here are numbered, this made us really nervous and we started to panic about the rest of our trip.  Luckily, we reapplied with an invitation letter – which you need even for a transit visa of 3 days apparently – and we just found out that it was accepted.  So on the weekend of the 22nd, we are heading off for Turkmenbashi to take the Caspian Sea ferry to Baku, Azerbaijan.  We plan to leave on either the 23 or 24 of August, but by the time the ferry arrives in Baku, we are going to have to rush to get to Georgia in our 72 hour period – which commences somewhere in the middle of the Caspian.  We have heard some horror stories about the Caspian Sea ferry, but are in good spirits and plan to make the most of our trip, which now consists of a few extra destinations.

Thank you to some very generous donations, we will extend our trip to Greece!  Our current itinerary, which may change again, now is: Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, The Republic of Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece.  From Greece we may continue on through some of the Balkan States and then on through the Ukraine to Russia, Mongolia, China again, and Southeast Asia.  We are excited to get on the road again and will keep you all updated.  Thank you all again for your generous donations!

Kyz Kala, Exterior

Sultan Sanjar, who referred to himself boldly as Alexander the II or ‘Sultan of the World’ died of a broken heart in 1157. The woman he loved, it was discovered, was not a woman after all but a fairy. She had promised to marry the Sultan in exchange for three favors: 1) that he should never watch her comb her hair; 2) that he should never look at her feet, and; 3) that he should never embrace her. Naturally curiosity got the better of the Sultan and he discovered that when she combed her hair, she actually removed her head, put it on her lap and brushed her hair in that fashion. When he gazed at her feet he saw that she was hovering above the ground. When he tried to embrace the beautiful woman he discovered she was no more than air and fragrance. She thus explained that she was a fiary, and could henceforth only visit him in her fairy form. The modern tomb of the Sultan has a small square hole in the domed ceiling so his fairy lover can visit him from time to time. Before the turquoise tiles were removed from the dome of his mausoleum it was said that a rider could see the tomb from several days out. The Soviets, taking the lore about the Sultan’s fairy literally, tore up large portions of the roof in search of gold the fairy supposedly left her lover. It is, indeed, a very impressive structure, and well preserved (rebuilt). Of lesser importance, a small and rather bland mausoleum was built in the desert nearby for his actual (human) wife.

Moving to the East of the Sultan Kala and towards reality we discovered two crumbling Babylonian-like fortress remnants with corrugated walls and multiple stories intact. We ventured into the larger of the fortresses to discovered adobe stairs leading down into a cavern that dead-ended with a covered door. Were it not a world heritage site, I would have been tempted to get the shovel out of the 4×4 and find out what they kept in their basements in the 7th century. Originally built by Sassanians, the Seljuqs took power and used the fortress, called Kyz Kala, as their base in Merv.

Not far away from this ancient and mysterious structure is an important Muslim pilgrimage sit, a mausoleum for two companions of the prophet Mohammad. We were not permitted entrance as we were non-Muslims, which was okay with us as we spent the time on site examining an ancient water cistern and several ice houses used in the time of Alexander to keep meat cool throughout the summer. The innovation and technological adaptations these ancient people came up with would far surpass the average person thrust into the past in similar conditions. I sometimes wonder if we are really any smarter today than they were in the 6th century when they built the ice houses, cisterns and massive fortresses out of fewer materials than one can find in a bleak and desolate desert.

We lunched in the shade of the fortress walls drinking beer and unpacking our salads and soups as we watched herders run their cattle and camels through the fortress. That afternoon we drove around the city that has sprung up along the periphery of Merv. One village uses the interior of a small fortress as a dump, and we strolled through piles of trash, used needles, bottles, cattle bones and millions of blue plastic bags. A real shame for such history and culture to be turned into something of no worth to the locals whose history it is. It is a concept I have trouble fathoming, as someone who loves history, but comes from a country with only a few years, comparatively, of national heritage and a coherent past.

In my youth we would visit zoos all over the world. I’ve seen some of the most amazing zoos humanity has to offer, at the top of the list comes the Paris zoo and the Minnesota zoo, both of which offer a charming and humane environment for the animals while offering prime viewing and educational material for visitors. My visit to the Ashgabat zoo was startling, to say the least, and was accompanied by such a pungent blend of foul aromas that the interior of my nose began to twitch in protest.

The Ashgabat zoo, in Turkmenistan cost 1M, which is about 30 cents, to enter. After walking through the cobweb covered entryway we first encountered a fence with various hand-painted wooden signs showing which animals were available at the zoo. We noticed that the signs were removable, in the likely occurrence that one should die. Vulture were the first exhibit. Behind a low fence with a metal tin roof (in 100 degree heat) a giant vulture sat on a rock ripping apart raw, dirt-covered flesh. We heard a chopping noise and looked behind the shed, a man had some sort of animal on a wooden block and was using an ax to dismember the creature for food. The vulture seemed happy about the noise while it made the hair on my neck stick straight up. Hand-painted signs showed a finger and the words “Ouch!” next to the cage. There was no lighting, and each cage seemed like a death-row cell dimly lit and containing a vile creature of children’s nightmares.

The second exhibit was a swampy cage where someone had patched holes in the wire with planks of rotten wood and a street sign. Inside the murky darkness we saw what appeared to be a ROUS, a rodent of unusual size. I have no idea what this mystery creature was, it looked like a rat but was the size of a cockerspaniel. One was white, with red eyes while its counterpart was black with black eyes. It had a long rat’s tail and webbed feet, and it also was ripping apart flesh with its two buck teeth under an “ouch!” sign.

The third exhibit explained one of the many foul smells, a duck pond under a low fenced roof that had not ever been cleaned. Ducks mated at random and chicks and elderly ducks lounged together in their own feces, apparently uncontrolled. The ducks far outnumbered the space available to them, and some were sitting atop others, which might have been dead.

The aquarium behind the duck pond proved the source of another of the unidentifiable aromas. The pool was open-air and contained a large and rather impressive collection of algae. Dead goldfish spotted the top of the pond while frogs and tadpoles swam around happily in their lurid haven.

Behind these wonderful exhibits was the bear, wolf and lion exhibit. Each had its own hand-made cage with sufficient room to curl into a fetus and cry. We watched for a few moments as the wolf attempted to run in place before falling over the sink used as a watering troth. The lion didn’t budge, and the bear sat picking at the goo running out of its eyes. Tears?

There was a rather odd array of happy looking porcupines. At least a dozen of them in various cages lounged in abandoned tractor tires lapping at still water and chewing on wilted carrots. They looked up at us as we walked by as if to say, “hey! Its better than being in the desert.”

There was a large collection of farm animals, especially camels and lamas, which seemed relatively content to be fed once a day and otherwise left alone. The locals in the zoo gave the lamas a wide birth for fear of spit, and did not allow their children to pet the camels, which looked past their prime and overly tattooed, a sign that these were once work camels who had exhausted their usefulness.

A bird park was the final crescendo, with turkeys, pigeons and chickens of various breed lounging around their piles of feces and still water with one eye on the man chopping meat for the vultures and the other eye on the children who tapped gently against the cage.

Despite the abysmal conditions at the zoo, I was impressed to see mothers explaining to their children what they were seeing, and those strolling around the park looked happy as they eagerly pointed at the dilapidated foxes or clapped their hands in glee at a spitting lama. It was no Paris zoo, but it will be at the top of my list of strange experiences in Central Asia.

Nissa

Yesterday we got in the 4×4 and took an off road expeditionary tour of Nissa,which was once a Parthian capital in the 3rd century BC. At one point over forty towers surrounded the small adobe fortress on the hilltop, but today there is little remaining of the once bustling capital. Atop a sloping, man-made hill rests one remaining tower which we discovered is used by several variety of bee as a giant nesting ground. A desert hedgehog had apparently gotten too close to the tower, for it lay crinkled in a ball at the base of one giant nest.

Inside the fortress itself, which is little more than a hill where the top is shaped like a bowel with a large depression on top where former royalty once roamed. Today the interior is filled with a strange crawling plant that albino lizards seem to enjoy. The locals who occupy the region directly to the north of old Nissa have erected a small adobe structure in the center where a guard lives to ensure everyone has paid the hefty 16M entry fee. We did not pay this fee because the guards at the gateway tried to extort more money out of us, so we took the off-road approach and hiked into the fortress on foot. Not an easy task in 105 degree weather in a desert without shade.

Along the western wall of the fortress was an irrigation canal where dozens of boys were swimming and washing their hair. Down the road several other children sat at small booth selling soap or sponges. There are no child labor laws here.

Nissa itself is an amazing story, set up by the Parthians, captured by local dynasties and finally razed in the 13th century by the Mongols. It was one of the more heroic last stands in Central Asia, and the more skilled and equipped Mongols took 15 days to captured the walled city, destroying everything within. Once the Mongols left, however, the site was used as a Zoroastrian temple grounds before being abandoned as the land around the fortress became arid and bleak.

Uzbek CYM

One of the strangest, and most frustrating things about traveling in Central Asia has been the double standards related to costs. As Americans we take for granted the amazing equality we have inside the country. True, we have problems, but one would never walk into a museum and be charged a different fee because of the color of his skin. That is not so in Central Asia.

In Uzbekistan, for a local to get into the Registan it cost 200 CYM, for a foreigner it costs 7000 CYM. Similarly, to get into any sight in Khiva, a foreigner must buy a city-wide pass that costs roughly $7 USD while locals can pay to enter whatever exhibit they want for free or for pennies on the dollar. Can you imagine the same practice in the US?

For a local in Turkmenistan to get into the underground lake it costs 3 Minat, but 30 Minat for a foreigner. (Thats the difference of $14 USD). We drove over an hour to reach the underground lake only to be rudely shoved aside by a guard who demanded fistfulls of cash. In this stubborn instance we turned on our heels and left the park, a $14 USD difference is not only unethical, its downright discriminatory.

And cash is not only demanded at ridiculous sums, its sometimes simply taken. In Kazakhstan we  were hassled by police, guards and railway attendants who demanded money, and when it wasn’t give they patted us down and took it anyway. A strange way to treat a visitor.

On your customs forms in Central Asia you have to list how much you are bringing into the country. We’ve heard of other travelers who didn’t report all the cash they were carrying, and as a result corrupt guards simply took the extra cash and laughed away all complaints. On the other hand, if you do list how much money you have you will get shaken down by one of the custom’s officials pals. Catch 22. We stick to withdrawing small sums out of ATMs, though even that is tricky.

Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling here, but the money issues are a bit annoying, and it really makes me appreciate the countries we’ve visited that don’t discriminate based on country of origin.

Gates of Hell

Dante readers beware, the “Gates of Hell” are very real. They are located in the middle of a vast, uninhabitable desert (not unlike the Biblical desert where Satan tempted Jesus) outside Darvaza, Turkmenistan.

Locals say that someone was drilling for natural gas in the desert when the drill hit an air pocket and the friction of the metal piping exploding at massive speed out of a rock hole caused a spark to ignite the reserve of natural gas, setting it eternally alite.

Today the crater is 60 meters across and easily 50 meters deep at its furthest point. The flames burst out of the crater fueled by the natural gas, but to the casual eye it looks as if the rock and sand are simply emitting an enormous amount of heat and flame. At one point there was a thick cable circling the crater to keep curious travelers at a safe distance, but the heat of the eternal flame managed to snap the cable, melting sections of it into piles of ruble, while other sections have become fused into the landscape.

For roughly a kilometer in every direction the earth is grey and lifeless, inhabited only by beetles, spiders and perhaps a wandering lizard. A strange coral reef looking rock sticks up from the grey sand in stalactite-like formations. All attempts to identify the rock online proved futile, though I’m no geologist. The remnants of a now unidentifiable machine rest all around the perimeter, and as I circled the area I found lizards and other creatures warming themselves on the hot metallic surfaces of various engine parts presumably belonging to the unfortunate drilling device that started the whole saga.

The wildlife around the dead ring of sand becomes more intense and is reminiscent of the creatures in Storm Troopers. Walking out to the crater at night with nothing but a flashlight and, naturally, a giant flaming crater to indicate the way, I managed to hit an angle with the flashlight just right so that in the distance I saw two tiny green gem-like lights glistening in the distance in the sand. I walked over to investigate and leaned in really close. The two gems turned out to be the curious blinking eyes of a spider the size of a golf ball, with his eight hairy legs extending out from there like so many reasons to run and hide. I slowly backed away and shined the light at the same angle across the landscape. All around me pairs of little green lights blinked like lightening bugs and panic rose in my whole body as my arms, thinking on their own, attempted to fly me out of there. I ended up with two flashlights, one scanning the distance for green gems to avoid, the other aimed at my toes so that if one came near my I could scream my farewells as my heart stopped.

We decided to camp out at the crater, obviously this decision was made before I knew an army of giant spiders inhabited the warm sands around the crater. We set up our tent, started a fire of our own, and cooked a simple meal while drinking beer from the cooler. (We are Americans, after all, why not tail-gate the gates of hell?) In the distance, the crater raged seemingly out of control, the flames licking the sky as if to snap the stars right out and gobble them up. We danced around our own little fire to the tuns from the portable iPod, and listened to Mike play the guitar with the fire from the crater cracking the percussion in the distance.

Morning came slowly as the sounds of the desert kept me wondering and imaging what was happening outside the tent. We boiled water in the morning for coffee and were on the road again by 9am. Twelve kilometers from the natural gas crater lies a crater of greater depth but lesser width that is filled with water. The water emits bubbles, indicating heat, but there is little information on the spring, or why the crater is so deep (at least 70 meters). All attempts to find a boiling miniature mud crater in the vicinity were in vain.

Despite the giant man-eating spiders (that get bigger each time I tell this story, naturally) and the bubbling water that could cook you alive, or the crater of fire that form the gates of hell, I still find Darvaza one of the nicest and most interesting natural wonder I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

For more information on Darvaza and Turkmenistan please see read about our Second Trip to the Gates of Hell and our Turkmenistan Destination Guide.