Our guide turned up at the agreed time, with a GSM chip for my phone as promised and we set off towards the no-longer existing town of Davaza (Derweze) about half way to Ashgabat. According to our guide book the town no loner exists because the previous president decided he did not like it and had it "removed". So if it does not exist, why go there? Well it is famous for a man made wonder called Devils gate, but we will get to that.

Our route lay along a 110 km section of new road that was not on our map. This section of road joined Dashogus to the main North-South highway from the Uzbek border to Ashgabat. Then 200 km on that North-South Highway. As you can see from the photos the parts of the "new road" near Dashogus were being spruced up for the up coming Independence Celebration and the traffic simply had to find its way around the workmen and their materials and tools.

A continuing feature of the days drive were the police men stationed along the roadway. Yesterday coming from Konye-Urgench we passed a pair of policemen on the side of the road about every 5 km. We got suspicious as every such pair seemed to be on the southern side of the road and to have found a large shade giving tree to stand under. Today the police were not as lucky as there were no shade trees and maybe because of that there were fewer such patrols.

About 40 km south of the junction with the North-South highway the dwindeling farm land finally gave way to true sandy desert and that scenery persisted throughout the afternoon. The heat also persisted as during the middle part of the day we drove mostly due south directly into the sun; boy did we lament the demise of the trucks cab airconditioning during that long afternoon.

Eventually we came to the site of the previous town of Derweze. There are a few buildings and rough roadside food places the the place does mainly not exist. A short section of incredibly rough road bypassed an as yet incomplete bridge over the railway and we were at the turn off the Devils Gate. A short jaunt over an 11 km section of sandy track and we pulled up beside this 80 m x 60m hole in the ground, a crater really with sheer vertical sides.

The crater was formed during the early 1970s by a Soviet era gas exploration team. They were drillng for natural gas when they hit a layer of hard rock through which they could not drill so decided to blow their way through the rock. This had the unfortunated effect of releasing the gas trapped below. So their drilling site turned into a source of escaping natural gas. Eventually (we could never get a good story as to how long after the explosion) someone decided it would be "better" to set fire to the gas rather than have it escape into the local atmosphere, so that's what hapened. So today 40+ years later the gas is still burning. Our guide told us that in the past the flames were much higher than today and at one time the flames actually came out of the crater and above ground level. But today there are only pockets of flames along the floor and sides of the crater. Though, these flames are enough to make the edge of the crate, and a good distance down wind, very hot and uncomfortable.

We were at the crater to see this man made marvel, to have dinner there, to see the crater at night (and in our case with almost a full equinox moon), and to camp there. So that's how we occupied ourselves for the evening.


We camped a few hundred meters from the crater behind a small hill to get some protection from the craters hot exhaust gas. The top of that same hill also gave a good view of the crater.