Monday 6 February 2017

Turkmenistan

6 minute read

The Dream 


Richie has a dream to visit Turkmenistan. I knew this about him when we met, and accepted it then, without thinking much about it. So I've missed the opportunity to have any issue whatsoever with this dream of his. I hadn't realised that this dream would ever impact my life, but this year we're aiming to travel a bit, and hopefully to expand our horizons beyond Europe. Enter, Turkmenistan.

Specifically, he wants to visit the Darvaza gas Crater, more commonly known as the Gate to Hell, Hell's Gate or the Door to Hell. It is a pretty amazing thing. It's a 230 foot wide, 66 foot deep pit of flames in the otherwise barren desert landscape. The origins of the pit are somewhat unclear, but the consensus is that a group of Russian geologists were drilling for oil in the desert back in 1971 and accidentally drilled into a broad methane gas reserve causing the ground to collapse, bringing the rigging equipment with it into the crater. Methane gas is both toxic and explosive, so the geologists set fire to the crater in order to burn off the noxious gas but underestimated the amount of gas in the reservoir. The methane combusted, but didn't burn off, and has been burning brightly in the desert for 46 years now.







So the Gate to Hell is a massive, burning hole in the ground in the Turkmenistan desert. Very cool! I'm actually excited by the suggestion to visit this place, and start googling the second I read Richie's email suggestion. I rapidly develop a set of concerns about the journey.


Issue 1: Travel sickness 


I suffer from travel sickness. You can read more about what that is and what it's like to have it here (no gross details, don't worry). Long story short, a windy road of any kind whatsoever is something I struggle with and have been fortunate enough to avoid on my previous travels.

I don't really know what's involved in the trip, but I'm pretty sure that public transport in this area, especially in the desert, will fall somewhere between non-existent and not for the faint hearted on the travel comfort spectrum.


Issue 2: Heat, food, general sickness 


With maximum temperatures estimated at 31°C in May when we were planning on going, the temperatures in Ashgabat lie just within the parameters of comfortable range. Damn, that's one excuse out.

Because I have issues with my stomach, food is always a concern for me when travelling. I have a very strict diet, which is impossible to adhere to when travelling without causing everyone around me a great deal of hassle, but fortunately I generally get away with eating a typically normal diet for about a week before it starts to make me feel very sick. All of this is fine within Europe, and I could probably last a long stint across the US or any Western country if I was strict enough with my diet. Areas like Central Asia scare me, because I don't know what to expect, but I do know that it probably won't lie within my fussy limits for a low to medium budget. In Turkmenistan, Richie tells me, "all they eat is goat". I'm pretty sure this is a gesture of mocking hyperbole on his part, but am somewhat afraid that it's true.

The combination of suboptimal travel and food conditions with just about tolerable heat, little access to typical comforts like shade of any kind, running water etc., along with other small hassles like visa applications, substantial flight costs and so on, serve to muster a generalised sense of anxiety about visiting the Turkmenistan desert.


Issue 3: Hell's Gate: A giant spider magnet


With issue one and two out of the way, I can tell you the most pressing, and only potentially deal breaking issue I have with visiting Hell's Gate. Within six minutes of googling, my excitement had quelled, diminished, and been replaced by dread upon finding a description of Hell's Gate as a "spider magnet". Apparently, this desert is home to camel spiders. In fact, if you google image search "camel spider", the results will be peppered with images of Hell's Gate.



If you haven't heard of them, camel spiders aren't actually spiders. They're solifugae, or in lay-man's terms, they're half spider, half scorpion monsters. They're huge. Being the only source of heat and light in the desert, Hell's Gate is very attractive to the massive population of camel spiders which inhabit the desert. It's actually a strange and fascinating phenomenon. After being drawn to the crater, rather than cosying up and toasting themselves some marshmallows, as reasonable spiders would do, they launch themselves into the pit. This awesome vice vlogger explained that this is probably them "trying to reunite themselves with their dark lord".

It's actually sort of good then, I reason, trying desperately to maintain my enthusiasm about this suggested trip. There might be a few spiders around, but they don't stay, they jump in. Hell's Gate gets rid of them. Hell's Gate is my friend. I love Hell's Gate. That tides me over until I find a forum post that describes quite how many spiders there are in the area surrounding the crater. The guy said that there was about one spider per three or four feet. Sitting in my living room, I make a rough estimate, and against my will I imagine that there are twelve to fifteen of those spiders in this room. Then I imagine that this room is a very hot desert, and I'm wearing sandals. Well maybe it'll be nighttime when we get there, I reason. But I'll still be wearing sandals. Is it better or worse to be plunged into darkness and not see them? We'll probably camp there, Richie told me. I imagine sleeping in a tent and knowing that they're out there. At this point, a short circuit occurs in my brain and cuts my imagination off. Panic is setting in. I remember the concept of cognitive dissonance, and that experiment where people who held a pencil in their mouths, forcing the surrounding muscles into a smile, reported greater feelings of happiness than those whose muscles were forced into a frown under experimental conditions. So in a desperate bid to muster enthusiasm, I force a smile (without a pencil). Sitting in my sitting room, keeping up the experimental smile, I do another twenty minutes or so of googling but all of the above concerns grow only stronger. I park the idea for now. I read somewhere that your memory of an event is greatly affected by the end of the event, so that you could have had a lovely experience but a poor ending may totally warp your memory of it, e.g. an excellent lunch ending in an unpleasant interaction with a waitress may later be recalled as an unpleasant lunch, or a torturous gym session ending with calming stretches may be encoded into memory as a pleasant gym session. So I bring my maniacal smile for a swift, pleasant ten minute walk and forget about Turkmenistan.

Two days later, Richie tells me a new fun fact that he came across while reading a little more about camel spiders. The desert is very hot with little to no shade. When you walk through the desert, you carry a shadow with you. The spiders are thrilled with this: 'a shadow! There are never shadows here!'. So, along they trot to hang out in the shadow. All day. They follow you. An army of giant spiders, in your shadow.


End.