Many locations around the world have at times been claimed in local myths and legends to represent gateways to hell. Turkmenistan doesn’t claim to host a literal portal into the underworld, but its Gates of Hell easily beats most of the competition in looks. The huge, constantly burning crater in the desert has attracted interest and tourists from around the world but Turkmenistan’s president now wants to finally close the Gates of Hell.
Gates of Hell to be closed?
Medieval and Renaissance Christian art often depicted the literal jaws of hell, a gaping demonic mouth waiting to swallow the wicked on Judgment Day.
The Darvaza gas crater might not be quite as dramatic, but it certainly is an intimidating sight, even more so because no one can explain where exactly it came from.
It’s generally said that the Gates of Hell is actually the aftermath of a drilling accident in the 1960s or 1970s. The crater happens to be located in the middle of one of the world’s largest concentrations of natural gas.
A Soviet drilling operation supposedly ended disastrously when the ground beneath the drill rig collapsed, exposing a huge cavern filled with methane gas and dragging down much of the drilling equipment, though no one was killed in the collapse.
The Soviet geologists decided to set the crater on fire to stop the spread of the methane gas, assuming that the fire would burn up all of the gas in a few weeks and the pit would be extinguished.
Instead, the Gates of Hell, as the crater became known, has continued to burn for five decades and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.
Tourism hopes thwarted by remote location
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has had a mixed relationship with the imposing crater. The president is rather eccentric and has essentially made himself the country’s permanent ruler.
A decade ago he announced a plan to close the Gates of Hell which never amounted to anything. In 2019 he responded to rumors about his death by having himself filmed doing doughnuts around the fiery crater in a rally car.
That stunt and other coverage in the West has made the Gates of Hell a somewhat recognizable location in recent years, but the country has not been able to profit much from this attention.
Turkmenistan receives few tourists and the crater is, even within Turkmenistan, located in the middle of nowhere. There may be interest abroad, but few people are actually willing to make a journey through the desert to get to the thing.
Turkmenistan’s economy is mostly reliant on natural gas; a giant hole in the ground which is constantly consuming that natural gas probably has to be addressed eventually.
Even if the president has finally made up his mind about closing the Gates of Hell, his government now must figure out how it can extinguish a massive crater fire which has been burning for half a century. That might not be the easiest of tasks.
