A note on the approach rather than the site: the obvious track is not the right one. Locals were friendly and pointed us at the longer route, which is longer for a reason. Take the long one.
A 69-metre crater, still burning, alone in the Karakum.
Anomaly✓ VERIFIED
Darvaza Gas Crater
A gas field set alight in the 1970s and still burning
Region
Ahal, Turkmenistan
Coordinates
40.2525, 58.4394
Access
Open access
Risk
Severe
224
The record
A 70-metre crater in the Karakum Desert, burning continuously since at least the 1980s. The standard account is a Soviet drilling collapse followed by a deliberate ignition intended to burn off for weeks. Documentation of the original event is thin.
The oracle
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The approach gives nothing away. Darvaza Gas Crater does not announce itself. What registers first is scale — the structure is larger inside than the approach prepares you for, and colder.
The floor is a survey of everything the ceiling used to be. The known history covers perhaps two thirds of what you are standing in. Beyond that the record thins into municipal paperwork and hearsay, and then into nothing at all.
Nobody who works nearby will name it. They give directions around it instead. At danger level 4 of 5, the honest advice is that the place deserves more caution than curiosity usually allows.
Site reconstruction
Walk inside Darvaza Gas Crater
You arrive outside. Orbit the site, fly over it or walk the grounds, then go in — four fragments of this site's record are scattered through the structure, and your torch runs down the whole time.
ENTER THE SITE →orbit · fly · walk, then inside · sign in to keep the record
Generated from this site's record — a anomaly of its scale and condition. Its character, not its surveyed floor plan.
Field reports · 1
Written by people who actually went. Where these contradict the oracle, believe these.
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Discussion · 1
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The 1963 date is off by a year in most sources. The municipal record says otherwise, I can dig out the reference.