The Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan

Since leaving Ashgabat, the following two days consisted of a long drive through the Karakum Desert, with sand dunes and heards of goats, scavaging for food. On the first night, we set up camp and pitched our tents as a family of wooly brown goats wandered over. I hearded them away from the cook group, who were trying to prepare dinner, and towards some discarded watermelon skins, which they happily chomped on. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, a few men on motorbikes passed through the dust track, and waved to us, all inquisative as to what we were doing. We must look quite an odd sight to locals, with a big orange truck and our dome tents.



As night fell, it was arranged for an old Russian truck to pick us up and take us to a flaming gas pit, with eruptions of fire, in a huge gas crater. Spurts of gas seemed to escape from the edges of the ground, creating swirling twisters of dust. Moths swooped over us, diving towards the flames in this apocalyptic vision of hell.



Taking the truck to and from the pit was an adventure in itself, as we stood in the back, griping onto a rickety bar, as the truck reved up, over sand dunes and ducking sharply down the other side, with a short beam of light providing the only warning of our unpredictable terrain. We clung on, during a journey that resembled a rollar coaster, hoping that such a primitive vehicle was up to the task of negotiating bumpy sand hills. It was an amazing experience, especially the gas crater, the heat that it produced and the contrast of the flames against the surrounding blackness.

The following night, we bush camped near a river, where some people took a swim, while dinner was prepared. The camp meal usually consists of potatoes, tomatoes, meat and anything that can be found at the local markets and cooked on our gas stove. Tonight the guys cooked us a meal of pasta, with onions and sausage in a tomato sauce. There was a beautiful sunset, which we watched dissapear being our tents. A camp fire was made, and we sat around what has been dubbed the 'bush television', eating our dinner and chatting away until we were sleepy enough to go to our tents.