If you take a similar trip as the following traveler you can respond to anyone shouting "Go to hell!" with a polite response in the form of, "I've already been there and it's in Turkmenistan."
Imgur user LeftyC recently regaled the entire Internet with a peculiar trip to hell, which isn't actually hell.
No, we imagine the real hell to be a place where you are in a boarding queue for eternity behind a traveler who decided to bring a bunch of egg sandwiches on the plane.
The earth version of hell is actually just a huge pit of eternal fire, which, come to think of it, does indeed sound like the mythical version we have read about.
Some of you may be familiar with the Door to Hell, or the Darvaza Crater. For the uninitiated, here is a brief video that explains how you too can see a giant hole in the ground that has burned for decades.
And here is another:
As the videos state, a group of scientists, presumably looking for oil, decided to drill in the Turkmenistan desert back in 1971. The result was a hole into a natural gas well and one expensive loss of oil-drilling equipment.
And when life hands you a hole spewing natural gas you naturally light it on fire.
Some four decades later, LeftyC was in the area and decided to check out the marvel. The Imgur user posts: "We started our trip about 6 yrs ago in the capital of Turkmenistan, Ashgabad. A crazy, beautiful city with mostly marble, fountains, more marble, statues and a bit more marble. But that is something for another post."
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LeftyC explains that her group made it out into a great wide void of a desert: "The last 30 minutes required a bit of desert navigation, and then we finally saw what we came for... The Darvaza gas crater!"
Now before you book a trip anywhere, including hell, you like to get a feel for the experience.
Thankfully, LeftyC continues with images and an explanation of his/her own trip: "We decided to hang out by the side a bit and enjoy some wine. An odd experience - in the desert it gets quite cold at night, but occasionally when the wind turns it feels like someone is blowing a hairdryer in your face. After (another bottle of) the wine, we decided to go bunk in our tent - and felt like we were on another planet! A great experience which I'll not quickly forget."
If that sounds enticing then Lonely Planet offers a brief explanation of where you can find the world's most interesting hole in the Karakum Desert.
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