Turkmenistan contains the Darvaza gas crater, a burning natural-gas field popularly nicknamed the “Door to Hell.”
The crater lies in the Karakum Desert near the village of Darvaza. In 1971, a Soviet drilling operation reportedly encountered an underground cavern, causing the ground to collapse and exposing a gas-filled crater. Geologists set the gas alight to prevent the spread of methane, expecting it to burn out quickly; the flames continued for decades.
The site became one of Turkmenistan’s most recognizable tourist attractions, although access and conditions can be controlled by authorities. Reports differ on some details of the original accident, including the precise drilling circumstances, but the crater’s location and persistent flames are well established.
Turkmenistan is a largely desert country in Central Asia. It borders Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, and has a coastline on the Caspian Sea, which is commonly treated geographically as a lake rather than an ocean. Thus Turkmenistan remains landlocked in the usual political-geographic classification.