Door to Hell
Source: wikipedia.org

No one on this earth wishes to take off to hell, but what if the hell is so visually stunning that it can contradict your vision of heaven. A few decades ago, a gaping, fiery crater opened up in the Northern Turkmenistan's desert and created the most wonderful hell on Earth. This place is unique because it is barely a pit with burning methane, which is being ejected from the ground at high pressure. This place can fascinate anybody with its out-of-the-world portrayals of beauty.

The Darvaza Crater is more commonly known as the Door to Hell and the Gateway to Hell, and it is a significant feature on an otherwise barren region. Turkmenistan is comprised mostly of sand, with the Karakum Dessert covering around 70% of the country. Once a part of the ancient Silk Road, the country fell upon the Soviet rule for most of the 20th century. The origin of this gateway to hell is still unspecified but it is assumed that it has been burning since 1971. The story goes that, Soviet scientists set it on fire to burn off the noxious gases after the surface under a drilling gear dripped, and perhaps the scientists underestimated the amount of fuel that reserves below, as Turkmenistan has the sixth largest natural gas reserves in the world. But opposite of this Soviet period story, the local geologists say the crater formed in the 1960s due to a mudflow and didn't catch fire until the 1980s. No one knows about the origin of this crater, and perhaps the origin of this natural enigma will remain as a mystery forever.

Source: wikipedia.org

The Darvaza crater is 225 feet (69 meters) wide and 99 feet (30 meters) deep. The crater burns with thousands of small fires and sounds like a roaring of an enormous engine. It burns so cleanly that there's almost no smoke around it. The observers can easily see the flames of the fire and hold the extraordinary view in their memories permanently.

Explorer and Storm Chaser, George Kourounis came to be the first person to explore Turkmenistan's gas-fueled Darvaza Crater in November 2013, with the expedition funded by National Geographic and supported by the travel company Kensington Tours. At the bottom, he collected soil samples to learn if life can survive in such harsh conditions and possibly clearing the way to understand whether life could survive identical situations elsewhere in the universe. He got down and encountered the brutal heat of about 207 Degrees Fahrenheit. But with some hard work and fortune, they found some bacteria living at the bottom in those high temperatures, and the strangest thing was that they were not found in any surrounding ground outside the similar crater. George explains that a place like this can make any human being feel extremely small and vulnerable.

The Darvaza crater is at quite open space in the desert and thus, tourists can easily catch up with this place. It takes approximately three hours to reach the crater from Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat. And several people strive to explore this place because it gives them a feeling of being on some another weird and exploding planet or being a part of some mega science fiction film. Turkmenistan's government has now established a security fence around the crater. The crater and the fence are intriguing more tourist, but some people are moreover unhappy that the essence of this place will be lost. Even after all the differences and theories throughout the years, the Gateway to Hell has never damped, and the fire will rage eternally in the crater.

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(Source - www.nationalgeographic.com / www.smithsonianmag.com / Wikipedia)


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