CIRCLING THE GLOBE as a travel writer, visiting almost 150 countries over about 20 years, I have seen a lot of remarkable things. I’ve stood in the basket of a hot-air balloon and watched herds of elephants crossing the Serengeti. I have travelled by helicopter in Antarctica to see humpback whales feeding in the frigid waters. I’ve been awestruck by the Taj Mahal in India, Machu Picchu in Peru and the Pyramids of Giza. I have even felt the last rays of a sunset quickly fading over Cambodia’s Angkor Wat as I sat atop a temple.
But I have never, ever seen or experienced anything like the Gates of Hell, its flames dazzling from the bottom of the crater 98 feet below, lighting up the Karakum Desert with burning methane. My visit, nearly a decade ago now, was truly an unforgettable experience.
That place is on my mind these days because it has been in the news recently. Darvaza, Turkmenistan’s famous flaming gas crater, is finally about to be extinguished, its polluting abyss plugged, hopefully forever. The country’s new president, Serdar Berdimuhamedov, has announced that the United States is going to help his country do it for the good of the whole world.
The crater is in one shows that methane leaks from those fields caused more global heating in 2022 than all the carbon emissions of the United Kingdom).
