The Door to Hell, Turkmenistan

Everybody is familiar with hell. It’s a basic concept that if we do good deeds in this life we will go to heaven and if we do bad deeds we will go to hell. This is our religious concept.

In our basic imaginations we consider hell a place with fire. In our religious books hell is described as a place of fire in which bad people will be punished for their bad deeds.

But there is a hell on earth as well. Mostly when people get into trouble or something happens with their life they say my life is hell but the real hell on earth is in Ashgabat.  It is in located in the middle of Karakum Desert.

Let me explain in details about this door to hell. In 1971 Soviet engineers discovered the site. They thought that its an oil field. The engineers started drilling the ground to get a sample of the oil. They wanted to test the quality of oil. But instead of oil the engineers found gas. The ground where they were drilling collapsed and their camp fell in the ground as well.

There were dangerous gases releasing from the collapse ground and were affecting the nearby villages. It was impossible to move all the gas out. And it was difficult to evacuate all the nearby villages. So the scientist thought that the best way to keep these gases out of the village is to burn them.

So they threw fire in the hole. The gas started burning. Scientist thought that all the gas will burn out within a week or two but this didn’t happen. That place is still on fire even after four decades. Many steps were taken to stop the fire but it was useless.

In 2009 Turkmenistan president visited the place and ordered to close the hole. But still there is nothing they could do to stop that fire.

The place is open for visitors. But only courageous people visit that place. There is a strong smell of sulphur over there. There is a similar place that has strong sulphur smell, i.e. Tatta pani. This place is in Azad Kashmir. Due to limited resources no one ever took a notice of that place. There is a stream over there that has extremely hot water. The stream is coming from underground and mix gets mix up with Cold River. Even in winter when the whole area is covered with snow the water of the stream remain boiling hot. People from far places come to visit that place but government of Azad Kashmir and Pakistan never took a notice of that place. Some people say that there is a Volcano under that stream and some say that there is a gas chamber beneath the ground.

But as there is a smell of sulphur in Door to Hell due to gases, same smell of sulphur is also there in Tatta Pani and if I am not wrong than there is a chance of having gas chamber beneath the ground. Government should take some steps as there are many people living over there and if something goes wrong they all will die.