First time when I got there, I couldn't even speak, I couldn't move, I just stood there

for like 10 or 15 minutes.

Your mind just blows and flies away, I don't know, like in another planet, it's really unusual

feeling when you see it for the first time.

In the middle of a vast desert, in one of the least visited countries in the world, you'll

find a 200-foot wide hole.

It's a hole that is filled with fire.

And that fire, it's been burning for nearly 50 years.

I'm Dylan Thoris and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

Today we're going deep into Central Asia to take a minute to visit a place I've been writing

and thinking about for nearly a decade and ask, what is this fire?

Why won't it stop burning?

And what is it like to be a tour guide to the gates of hell?

More after this.

Picture a flat sandy desert and shining up out of a massive hole comes this strange flickering

red light.

The hole is huge, it's 60 meters across, you could comfortably lay the leaning tower

of pizza inside of it.

And the flames reach temperatures of over 750 degrees.

This is and smells weird and supposedly desert spiders are attracted to the light and heat

and throw themselves into the gates of hell.

...