The cosmopolitan delights of Azerbaijan’s boomtown capital Baku are well known to international oil industry types, so it’s not surprising that the authoritarian country is heavily promoting itself as a tourist destination. With endless beaches, ancient ruins, snowcapped mountains and the chance of glimpsing the critically endangered Caucasian leopard, the country has plenty to offer visitors. Add mud volcanoes to the mix, and Azerbaijan begins to look like paradise for jaded travelers. 
 
 Mud volcanos -- typically, small conical mounds that bubble up a clayey slurry -- aren’t as spectacular as Etna or Mount St. Helens, but they are safer to view – normally – and Azerbaijan has more of them than any other country: 344, according to Adil Aliyev of the Geology Institute of Azerbaijan, co-author of “What Do We Know About Mud Volcanoes?” 
 
 The most popular place to see mud volcanoes is Gobustan National Park, about 37 miles from Baku. Famous for its ancient petroglyphs, Gobustan is also dotted with small mud volcanoes that can be viewed close up. These geological oddities are generally well-behaved but can occasionally erupt in magnificent bursts of flame. The Lokbatan volcano near Baku belched fire hundreds of feet into the air in 2001, and its 2012 eruption left a layer of mud spread over an area of two hectares, according to the Geology Institute. 
 
 Across the Caspian, another energy-rich former Soviet republic is trying to shake off its reputation as one of the world’s most isolated and repressive countries. Tourism, though, is in its infancy in Turkmenistan. The brand-new luxury hotels of the Avaza beach resort complex, complete with artificial river, are mostly empty, and it’s a bit disconcerting that the government’s official resort website is a dead link. 
 
 Tourists are few, but Turkmenistan swarms with oil and gas experts from all over, especially China, which the two countries recently announced will up its annual gas purchases to 65 billion cubic meters a year by 2016. Turkmenistan is thought to have the fourth largest gas reserves in the world, and the Galkynysh field that will supply China is the second largest after the South Pars field in the Persian Gulf. 
 
 And for adventurous tourists, Turkmenistan offers something even more spectacular than mud volcanoes: a “Door to Hell.” Set amid the bleak Karakum Desert, this attraction near the village of Derweze, or Darvaza, dates to the 1970s when a sinkhole opened beneath a test well drilled by Soviet geologists. Gas just beneath the surface ignited and has been burning merrily ever since. The ever-burning flames can be invisible by day, but at night they create a truly eerie sight, lighting up the desert for miles around like a giant witches’ cauldron big enough to swallow an office block. 
 
 
 
 Source: Wikipedia 
 
 Several local tour operators arrange trips to the crater. Accommodation is in tents, and the evening entertainment consists of, “Enjoy view to burning gas crater” followed next day by “enjoy morning view to burning gas crater.” 
 
 But that’s not all, according to one travel agency, which claims that the crater by night “becomes an attraction for huge and largely harmless spiders that run into the fire for reasons best known to themselves.” Presumably they run out again, or you’d think they’d be extinct by now. Could Derweze and its spiders have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to create Shelob, the humongous spider in “Lord of the Rings” who guards the way into the land of Mordor and the fiery pit of Mount Doom? Since Tolkien died in 1973, it seems unlikely. 
 
 But in the land whose late dictator erected a 50-ft golden statue of himself, anything is possible. 
 
 By Ky Krauthamer of Oilprice.com ||||| There are places on Earth that are a little creepy, places that feel a little haunted and places that are downright hellish. The Darvaza gas crater, nicknamed by locals "The Door to Hell," or "The Gates of Hell," definitely falls into the latter category—and its sinister burning flames are just the half of it. Located in the Karakum Desert of central Turkmenistan (a little over 150 miles from the country's capital) the pit attracts hundreds of tourists each year. It also attracts nearby desert wildlife—reportedly, from time to time local spiders are seen plunging into the pit by the thousands, lured to their deaths by the glowing flames. 
 
 So how did this fiery inferno end up in the middle of a desert in Turkmenistan? In 1971, when the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, a group of Soviet geologists went to the Karakum in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately for the scientists, they were drilling on top of a cavernous pocket of natural gas which couldn't support the weight of their equipment. The site collapsed, taking their equipment along with it—and the event triggered the crumbly sedimentary rock of the desert to collapse in other places too, creating a domino-effect that resulted in several open craters by the time all was said and done. 
 
 The largest of these craters measures about 230-feet across and 65-feet deep. Reportedly, no one was injured in the collapse, but the scientists soon had another problem on their hands: the natural gas escaping from the crater. Natural gas is composed mostly of methane, which, though not toxic, does displace oxygen, making it difficult to breathe. This wasn't so much an issue for the scientists, but for the animals that call the Karakum Desert home—shortly after the collapse, animals roaming the area began to die. The escaping methane also posed dangers due to its flammability—there needs to be just five percent methane in the air for an explosion to potentially take place. So the scientists decided to light the crater on fire, hoping that all the dangerous natural gas would burn away in a few weeks' time. 
 
 It's not as outlandish as it sounds—in oil and natural gas drilling operations, this happens all the time to natural gas that can't be captured. Unlike oil, which can be stored in tanks indefinitely after drilling, natural gas needs to be immediately processed—if there's an excess of natural gas that can't be piped to a processing facility, drillers often burn the natural gas to get rid of it. It's a process called "flaring," and it wastes almost a million dollars of worth of natural gas each day in North Dakota alone. 
 
 But unlike drillers in North Dakota or elsewhere, the scientists in Turkmenistan weren't dealing with a measured amount of natural gas—scientists still don't know just how much natural gas is feeding the burning crater—so what was supposed to be a few-week burn has turned into almost a half-century-long desert bonfire. 
 
 After visiting the crater in 2010, Turkmenistan's president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, worried that the fire would threaten the country's ability to develop nearby gas fields, ordered local authorities to come up with a plan for filling the crater in. No action has been taken, however, and the crater continues to burn, attracting unsuspecting wildlife and international tourists. 
 
 To visit the Darvaza gas crater, it's best to go at night, when the fire can be seen from miles away. The crater is located about 161 miles (about a 4 hour drive) from the Turkmen capital Ashgabat. Tours can be booked through agents in Ashgabat. Alternatively, some companies offer more structured tours of the surrounding area, with the Darvaza crater included (such as this tour, by The Geographical Society of New South Wales).
– A fiery pit has been burning in the middle of a Turkmenistan desert for more than four decades, and little has been done to get rid of it. The Darvaza gas crater, nicknamed the "Gates of Hell" or the "Door to Hell," has been on fire since 1971, when scientists were looking for oil fields in the Karakum Desert, then part of the Soviet Union. The spot where they began drilling turned out to be a haven for natural gas—and the site collapsed under the weight of the drilling gear, Smithsonian magazine reports. Several craters were formed, the biggest of which is 230 feet wide and 65 feet deep, and it was full of methane gas that began killing local animals. So scientists decided to burn the gas away, a common practice when unwanted natural gas is sticking around. They thought it would be gone in a few weeks; now, more than 40 years later, it's still burning, and experts aren't sure how much gas remains. Officials have called for action to stop the flames, to no avail, the Smithsonian notes. The spot, which is visible from miles away, has become a tourist attraction, oilprice.com reports. Visitors can stay in tents and view the site—as well as "huge and largely harmless spiders" that hang out nearby.