The standard tourist route in Turkmenistant is from Ashgabat to the Darvasa Crater and then on to the border with Uzbekistan.
The information about the journey on the Intrepid site says it is will be rough and bumpy. There were not wrong but didn't really express quite how rough and bumpy it would be! There is a dual carriage highway, well there used to be, it is now one side with no bitumen at all and the other is completely broken up. The 500 km journey from Ashgabat to the border is used by many trucks, bringing freight in and out of Turkmenistan. It takes the trucks 2 days to do the trip, they can't do it any quicker. The driving is around as many potholes as possible, and if not, go slowly through them!
We did the journey in 4 SUV's and there were a number of times we went completely off road into the surrounding desert in order to avoid both parts of the dual carriageway! There is nothing along the 'highway' - a few cafes with no windows as it is very hotel, very cold or very windy and a few tents where people can sleep to break up the journey. We saw camels, goats and a lot of desert.
We left Ashgabat in the afternoon and arrived at the first of the 3 craters we saw at around 5.30pm. It was a very slow journey. What added to the excitement, if you can call it that, was that we arrived in very high winds and a sandstorm! The sandstorm didn't let up until well into the night. Stinking hot, middle of the desert and sand blowing into your face and hair and body - what an experience!
The gas crater itself is a 70m wide crater in the Karakum desert which is permanently aflame, known as the 'gates of hell' and that is what it felt like, particularly with the sandstorm.
Soviet oil prospectors started drilling in 1971 and the ground collapsed so they stopped drilling and lit the gas to burn off the excess. It has been burning ever since, but is getting less and less over time. It did feel very very hot and you wouldn't want to fall in, you would be burned alive.
We stayed in a yurt camp nearby, fully expecting to see the beautiful night sky, but no, just a sandy beige sky with a glow from the gas crater.
We did drive the 1 minute back to the crater when it got dark and it was more impressive at night.
The wind didn't stop blowing and the sand didn't stop coming in the tent until not long before dawn, when we were up to start our epic drive to the border.
The road got even worse after the crater. We left at 5.30am and arrived at the border around 4pm, so over 10 hours.
What was astounding was that the President spent all that money on the white city of Ashgabat, which was like one huge show home and left the road to rot away. The Soviets built the road and then in 1991 when USSR collapsed, Turkmenistan did work on the road for a short while. Since then however it has been left to wear away into one of the worse roads I have been on. As bad as the roads in Nepal, but different because in Nepal they made no effort to bitumen some of the roads and they are dirt. Here in Turkmenistan they were good roads that have been left to deteriorate until there are huge bumps and pits which are really difficult to navigate.
Another weird border crossing as well. We had our passports checked by 7 people, one after the other when leaving Turkmenistan. We got our exit stamp and immediately had to show it to the security check, then immediately to a policeman outside a hut, and then he went inside the hut a foot away and checked it again! No wonder they have low unemployment in Turkmenistan.
The contrast with Uzbekistan was huge, greeted by a friendly guy who had a chat and a laugh over the new Australian passports with holograms and welcomed us with a smile to his country. With relief we crossed into Uzbekistan and borded a lovely modern bus on a proper road, glad our day was nearly at an end.
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