It was a scientific expedition gone horribly wrong. In 1971, a group of Soviet scientists set up a drilling rig to assess what they thought was a substantial oil field in the middle of Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert.
A scientific mishap in the Karakum Desert ripped the ground wide open
the 70m-wide, 30m-deep crater continues to burn so feverishly that locals have named the fearsome abyss of fire, flames and boiling mud the “Door to Hell”.
“It seems that the dangerous pit of fire will never stop burning,”But that hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of travellers – some of whom even camp on the gas field – from visiting the seemingly-eternal inferno, a real-life hell on Earth.