{"id":170,"date":"2019-09-16T13:26:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T13:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=170"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:35:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T13:35:50","slug":"turkmenistan-white-marble-camel-milking-and-the-door-to-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/16\/turkmenistan-white-marble-camel-milking-and-the-door-to-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkmenistan: white marble, camel milking and the Door to Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Robin Ewing
July 24, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have 42 hours to cross Turkmenistan or\nrisk fines, interrogation and a lifetime ban.  We will take the only road from Turkmenbashi\nto the capital Ashgabat and then head directly north to the Darvaza gas craters\nand exit into Uzbekistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s midnight, we\u2019re exhausted and have\nmore than 350 miles to Ashgabat on roads so bad they don\u2019t deserve to be called\nroads. We\u2019ve lost the Bandits (they have their own extraordinary Turkmenistan experience\nbut that\u2019s another story\u2026) and potholes the size of kiddie pools keep us at\nabout 20 mph for hours. Illuminated by the full moon, the landscape is barren,\nstretching out flat and dark, mountains in the distance. Occasionally, we pass\nmysterious compounds lit like small cities and surrounded by razor wire. Small\nanimals, maybe foxes or wild dogs, lope by, their eyes glowing green. We see no\none. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamie and Wardlaw sleep in the back and I drive\nin silence, watching herds of grazing camels in the dawn light. A woman in a\nlong dress with a patterned scarf wound around her face sweeps the dust from\nthe highway with an old broom, more dust billowing around her. It seems the\nmost Sisyphean task in the world. I stop at a lonely gas station and fill up\nthe car for less than $20. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ashgabat rises from the desert and suddenly\nwe are navigating the bizarre capital. Expansive white-marble buildings with\ngold and blue domes fill entire square blocks, and elaborate white streetlights\nframe gold bridges and gold statues. Needle-like gold monuments rise up from\nthe broad streets. The thermostat is already at 40C\/104F. It\u2019s surreal in the\nearly morning haze of no sleep. I look for the 40-foot gold statue of the late\nPresident for Life Saparmurat Niyazov that revolves with the sun. Later, I hear\nit has been torn down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At a market, a man with thick arms and a fitted\nshirt silently appears and grabs Jamie by the elbow. No photos he says in a\ndeep voice. A little later, Jamie and Wardlaw ignore the warning. Suddenly they\nare surrounded by a group of aggressive men who jostle with Jamie for his\ncamera and delete the photos. A woman looks at me and points to her eyes. I am\nbeing watched. I feel like I\u2019m in a spy movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We head out of the city and into the Karakum Desert, rolling sand dunes, wayward camels and dim, battered shacks filled with crouching silhouettes. The temperature climbs to 51C\/124F. We are looking for the Darvesa gas crater, also called the \u201cDoor to Hell\u201d (and sometimes \u201cHell\u2019s Gate\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The door to hell is a giant, burning hole accidently\ncreated by the Soviets in 1971. When a cavern of natural gas collapsed creating\na 230-foot wide crater, geologists thought they could burn off the poisonous\ngas by setting it on fire. It is still burning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also very hard to find. Nine years\nago Niyazov said the town of Darvesa was ugly so it was demolished. Now, only a\nfew ragged tea stands set among some dusty rubble on the side of the road mark\nthe spot. The main crater is a few miles before, down an unmarked and winding, deep\nsand road. We ask everyone but we still can\u2019t find it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we find the right person. A\nbow-legged, barefoot man with a scarf tied around his head motions for us all\nto get in his Landcruiser and then he drives straight into the dunes. He is the\nbest driver I have ever seen, coasting through deep sand and navigating the\ndesert dunes like it is a racetrack. He has pantomimed that he is taking us to\nthe crater, but instead we stop a tiny adobe-brick hut all alone on a dune. The\ncamels need milking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you\u2019ve never heard a baby camel cry,\nit\u2019s a deep moaning sound, like someone lying injured in a ditch groaning for\nhelp. It\u2019s horrible. And they had six moaning babies. We spent almost two hours\nwatching the man and his wife milk the camels, using the babies to get the\nmilking started. We mostly huddled under a sliver of shade from the hut wall to\nescape the intense 52 degree heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we were off again, coasting the dunes\non a crisscross of sand roads. We pulled over and the man, still barefoot,\njumped out and pointed down a dune. The crater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The door to hell gapes open in the middle\nof the dunes, unmarked with nothing to stop you from driving straight in.\nLooking down into it feels like standing on the lip of a volcano. The flames from\nthe bottom make it too hot to get really close. In the daytime it is both eerie\nand mesmerizing; I can only imagine what it looks like at night with the glow\nshooting up from the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After another pit stop at our new friend\u2019s\nhut for fresh, sweet camel yogurt and tangy, watery camel\u2019s milk (Jamie just\npretended to drink) on a blanket outside and we were back in the Cannonball Run\nfor the border.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Robin EwingJuly 24, 2013 We have 42 hours to cross Turkmenistan or risk fines, interrogation and a lifetime ban.  We will take the only road from Turkmenbashi to the capital Ashgabat and then head directly north to the Darvaza gas craters and exit into Uzbekistan. It\u2019s midnight, we\u2019re exhausted and have more than 350 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/RE-IMG_1360.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}