Smack bang in the middle of Turkmenistan’s desolate Karakum desert, one of the most sparsely populated areas in Central Asia, there’s a gargantuan crater some 70 metres wide that’s been burning for as long as anyone can remember.
The area is famous for two other notable, if comparatively prosaic, craters, too — the Water Crater and the Mud Crater (is this the setup to a Pokémon game?) — but the fiery Door to Hell remains, for obvious reasons, Karakum’s star attraction.
I say star attraction, but Turkmenistan (renowned, since the USSR’s collapse, for its repressive totalitarianism and loosey-goosey approach to human rights) is one of the least visited countries in the world, receiving as little as 14,000 tourists a year.