For over five decades, a pit of fire in the heart of the Karakum Desert has burned without pause — a geological accident that became one of the world's most surreal travel destinations. The Darvaza gas crater, nicknamed the "Gates of Hell," has long been Turkmenistan's most recognizable landmark: a 70-meter-wide hole in the earth, glowing orange against the night sky, hissing with flame and heat. But in May 2026, Turkmen officials made an announcement that drew fresh international attention — the fire is getting weaker. And now, scientists are raising an uncomfortable question: what happens if it actually goes out?
The answer is more troubling than it sounds. According to reporting from News.az, extinguishing the flames could release unburned methane directly into the atmosphere — a potentially worse outcome for the climate than letting it burn. This paradox sits at the intersection of geology, environmental science, and one of the most dramatic landscapes on earth.
What Is the Darvaza Gas Crater and Why Does It Exist?
The story begins in 1971, during the Soviet Union's aggressive push to tap Central Asia's vast natural gas reserves. Soviet geologists were drilling in the Karakum Desert in what is now Turkmenistan when they accidentally punctured a large underground natural gas cavity. The ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, swallowing the equipment and creating a crater roughly 30 meters deep and 70 meters wide.
Faced with the problem of toxic gas venting from the hole, Soviet engineers made a decision that seemed practical at the time: set it on fire. The logic was sound — burn off the methane rather than let it accumulate near populated areas. They assumed the gas pocket would be depleted within weeks.
Fifty-five years later, it's still burning.
The crater became known locally and internationally as the "Gates of Hell" — an apt description for a place that glows like a portal to the underworld, visible from miles away at night. For decades, it was barely a footnote in Western travel literature, given Turkmenistan's status as one of the world's most closed and authoritarian states. That changed in the 2000s and 2010s as overlanders and adventure travelers began making the trek to see it, and photos of the crater went viral internationally.
The Fire Is Dimming — And Officials Are Talking About It
In May 2026, Turkmen government officials publicly acknowledged what independent observers had been tracking for some time: the flames at Darvaza have become significantly weaker. The visual spectacle — once a roaring, intensely bright inferno — has reportedly diminished, with less dramatic flame activity and reduced visible emissions.
The likely explanation, according to officials, is mundane but consequential: gas extraction from nearby wells may be drawing down the underground reservoir that has fed the crater for over half a century. As surrounding wells pull natural gas from the same geological formation, less fuel reaches the crater's surface. The fire isn't going out because of some natural exhaustion — it's being starved.
A report via MSN citing regional monitoring notes that independent researchers suggest the decline may have started earlier than the official timeline indicates — meaning the government may have been aware of the weakening fire before making any public statement. This wouldn't be unusual for Turkmenistan, which has a history of tightly controlling information about its natural resources.
The Methane Problem: Why "Going Out" Isn't Necessarily Good News
Here's where the story gets complicated for anyone who might assume extinguishing a giant gas fire is straightforwardly positive for the environment.
Methane is approximately 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. When methane burns, it converts to CO₂ and water vapor — still a greenhouse contribution, but far less damaging than raw methane venting into the atmosphere. The Darvaza crater, even in its weakened state, is still burning off significant quantities of natural gas. If the fire were fully extinguished, that same methane wouldn't just disappear — it would vent unburned directly into the atmosphere.
Scientists monitoring the site have flagged this as a serious concern. The crater still releases large amounts of methane despite its weakening flames, and the transition from "burning crater" to "open methane vent" could represent a net worsening of its climate impact. This creates an unusual situation where the continued existence of a giant fire in the desert may be preferable — from a pure emissions standpoint — to its extinction.
This dynamic isn't unique to Darvaza. It echoes debates over coal seam fires, methane flaring at oil wells, and other cases where the less alarming-looking option (a visible flame) turns out to be the better choice compared to invisible gas emissions. The difference here is that Darvaza is a travel landmark and cultural icon, which adds layers of public interest and political complexity that a typical industrial methane vent wouldn't have.
Turkmenistan's Complex Relationship With Its "Gates of Hell"
Turkmenistan's government has had a contradictory relationship with the Darvaza crater. In 2010, then-President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow ordered the crater extinguished — a directive that was never carried out. In 2022, he repeated the order, framing it in terms of economic interest: the burning gas represented wasted revenue that could be captured and sold. Again, nothing happened.
The reasons are partly technical — extinguishing a crater of this size and sealing the underlying gas pocket is a genuinely difficult engineering challenge — and partly economic. Tourism to the Darvaza crater, while limited by Turkmenistan's visa restrictions and infrastructure gaps, has been a rare bright spot in a country that otherwise struggles to attract foreign visitors. The crater has appeared on international travel bucket lists, documentary series, and social media feeds, giving Turkmenistan a form of soft power it rarely gets from other sources.
Now, with the fire dimming on its own, the government faces a choice it didn't anticipate having to make: let it go out naturally and lose a global landmark, try to artificially sustain it for tourism purposes, or find a technical solution that addresses both the methane venting problem and the economic calculus.
What Visiting Darvaza Actually Looks Like
For travelers who have made the journey to Darvaza, the crater is unlike anything else on earth. The nearest city, Dashoguz, is roughly 270 kilometers away. Getting to the crater typically involves a multi-hour drive across desert terrain, often in a 4x4 with a local guide. The Karakum Desert — which covers roughly 70% of Turkmenistan's territory — is genuinely remote, and the logistics of reaching the crater have historically been part of its appeal.
The experience is best at night, when the glow of the crater is visible from a distance and the heat radiating from the rim is palpable. Travelers typically camp nearby, watching the flames through the darkness. Daytime visits are less dramatic but reveal the scale of the crater and the surrounding desert landscape.
For photography, a quality mirrorless camera for night photography is essential — the low-light conditions and dynamic range of the crater make it one of the more technically challenging but rewarding shots in travel photography. A sturdy travel tripod is non-negotiable for long-exposure shots. Desert camping in the Karakum also warrants a quality lightweight desert sleeping bag, as temperatures can swing dramatically between day and night.
Visa access to Turkmenistan has historically been restrictive, though the country has experimented with e-visa systems for certain nationalities. Most independent travelers obtain visas through tour operators. A reliable Central Asia travel guide covering Turkmenistan remains a useful planning resource, as on-the-ground information can be sparse and quickly outdated in a country with limited tourism infrastructure.
What This Means: The Bigger Picture
The Darvaza situation illustrates a recurring tension in environmental discussions: visible problems are easier to act on than invisible ones. A giant flaming crater is alarming-looking. Methane invisibly venting into the atmosphere is not — but it can be far more damaging. Policy and public attention consistently underweight invisible emissions relative to visible ones, and Darvaza is a vivid case study in why that bias is dangerous.
It also raises questions about how we account for accidental methane mitigation. The Soviet engineers who lit the fire in 1971 weren't thinking about climate change — the concept was barely in scientific discussion at the time. But they inadvertently created a combustion system that has been converting methane to CO₂ for over 50 years. Whether that counts as a net benefit relative to the counterfactual (the gas pocket eventually venting naturally) is a genuinely interesting accounting question that researchers are only beginning to take seriously.
For Turkmenistan specifically, the crater's dimming is a reminder that the country sits atop some of the world's largest natural gas reserves, and that its management of those reserves has global climate implications. Turkmenistan has historically been among the top methane-emitting nations per capita, largely due to its gas infrastructure. The Darvaza crater is a dramatic symbol of that reality, but the less visible problem — routine methane leakage across the country's pipeline and extraction network — is almost certainly larger in scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Darvaza crater actually going out?
Turkmen officials reported in May 2026 that the flames have become significantly weaker, likely due to gas extraction from nearby wells drawing down the underground reservoir. However, "weaker" is not the same as extinguished — the crater is still burning and still releasing methane. Independent monitoring suggests the decline has been gradual and may have begun before the government's announcement. Whether it fully extinguishes on its own timeline is uncertain.
Would extinguishing the fire help or hurt the environment?
This is genuinely contested. Burning methane converts it to CO₂ and water vapor, which is less damaging than raw methane emissions. If the fire goes out and the underlying gas pocket continues to vent, unburned methane — a greenhouse gas roughly 80 times more potent than CO₂ over a 20-year period — would be released directly into the atmosphere. Scientists have raised this concern, and it complicates the straightforward assumption that putting out a large fire is always the right environmental choice.
Can tourists still visit the Darvaza crater?
Yes, though Turkmenistan's visa requirements make it more logistically complex than most travel destinations. The crater itself remains accessible, though the weakening flames mean the visual spectacle is reportedly less dramatic than it was even a few years ago. Travelers planning to visit soon should check current visa requirements and consider booking through a tour operator with local expertise.
Why did Soviet engineers ignite the crater in the first place?
After the drilling collapse in 1971 created the crater, natural gas began venting from the hole. Soviet engineers were concerned about the accumulation of toxic gases near human settlements and decided to burn off the gas, expecting the pocket to be depleted quickly. The gas pocket turned out to be far larger than anticipated, and the fire has continued burning ever since.
Is Turkmenistan worth visiting just to see the crater?
That depends heavily on your travel style. Turkmenistan is one of the least-visited countries in the world and has significant logistical barriers, including visa restrictions and limited tourist infrastructure. For adventure travelers interested in Central Asia, it offers a genuinely otherworldly experience — the crater, the white marble capital Ashgabat, and the Karakum Desert are all striking in their own right. But it's not a casual destination, and the weakening of the crater's flames does reduce one of its primary draws.
Conclusion
The Darvaza gas crater has always been more than a tourist attraction — it's a monument to unintended consequences, a Soviet-era accident that became a geological anomaly that became a global landmark. Now, as the flames weaken after more than 50 years, it's also becoming a case study in the counterintuitive logic of methane emissions: sometimes the less alarming-looking outcome is the worse one.
Whether the fire fully extinguishes, is artificially sustained, or finds some equilibrium as the surrounding gas extraction continues, the story of the Gates of Hell is far from over. The underground reservoir that has fed it for half a century holds questions that scientists are still working to answer — about how much gas remains, where it's going, and what its disappearance means for one of earth's most unusual places.
For travelers, the calculus is simpler: if seeing the crater in its full intensity has been on your list, the window may be closing. For the rest of us watching from a distance, the dimming of the Gates of Hell is a reminder that the most interesting environmental problems rarely have clean endings.
