Turkmenistan                                          2015

The Dani of Papua

From Houston to Sydney 2013

 

I have never been terribly keen on camping in tents, but I do it because it is often the best way to experience wonderful, isolated, spectacular places.  Darvaza is such a place.

Having said that, last night was a particularly disturbed night.  After wandering around the gas crater many times and finding my way (with some help) back to the tents that had been helpfully erected by our drivers, I was almost asleep in my tent when I heard the scratching sound of an animal trying to get into my tent.  As any geographer knows, deserts can be the home of many dangerous creatures, most of which are nocturnal.  I decided not to open the tent to see what type of animal was trying to get inside; I just hit the side of my tent where the noise was coming from with my shoe instead.

The noise subsided.

About half an hour later, the scratching noise started again, with the sound this time clearly coming from within the tent.  Somewhat alarmed, I switched on the torch in my mobile phone, but nothing seemed to be evident.  In the shadow of the torch light, I did notice a large round rock under the groundsheet of the tent beside my sleeping bag that I hadn’t noticed before – I confirmed it was a rock and not a curled up snake or some kind of mammal by knocking on it.  It was definitely round and hard, which was a relief.

Although in a heightened state of awareness, I started dozing off again.  And then, about 20 minutes later, the scratching noise started again, this time louder than ever.  I turned on the torch on my phone, and saw my shoes and other belongings moving, swaying from side to side near the corner of my small tent.  Alarmed, I crawled over to the corner to shine the light of my torch into the area where things were moving, but no animal could be seen.  The scratching continued from the side of the tent, however, so I hit the side of the tent repeatedly with my show and I heard the animal move away.  As I lay down to rest again, I noticed something very strange – the round rock under the groundsheet of my tent was no longer there.

Next morning, I asked my fellow travellers whether any of them had experienced an animal trying to enter their tents.  One had – a tortoise (no doubt MY tortoise) had served one of my fellow travellers as a pillow for the night after finding my tent occupied by a somewhat less-than-hospitable traveller.

Both before and after breakfast, I did some final circuits of the gas crater (which looked magnificent in the morning light) before we all boarded our 4WDs for the return drive to Ashgabat.

We had only three short stops on the way back to the capital, the first two of which were just off the main highway near Darvaza.  The flaming gas crater is not the only crater in the area, although it is the largest and it is the only one caused by human actions.  There are two smaller craters (actually sinkholes), one of which has small fires, bubbling mud and apparently burning water in the bottom, while the other has a large pool of seemingly stagnant water strewn with rubbish at its base.

Our other stop was in a small village called Iyerbent where we stopped to see a Soviet-era monument commemorating a fight between Soviet soldiers and local Turkmens in 1931.  The monument was interesting if unremarkable, but it did give us the opportunity to have a more intimate look at a small desert Turkmen town which its open-air bread ovens, small mosque, seemingly abandoned but still used old trucks, camels, sand drifts, and so on.

We were back in Ashgabat by early afternoon.  Several of us were considering exploring Ashgabat with the drivers we had used on the trip to Darvaza, but they all seemed quite tired and apathetic towards the idea of doing more work.  I think they were right; like the drivers, I enjoyed a good rest that afternoon while resolving to do some other exploring at another time.

Day 4 - Darvaza to Ashgabat

Tuesday

12 May 2015