Most nights at the crater are still. The local term for the wind that occasionally arrives is gozsuz şemal — the eyeless wind, because it comes from no direction in particular and you can't see it move until it's already on you. That October night was one of those.
Wind, briefly
We had four guests, two tents, a kitchen tarp, a 4×4, and one fire. By twenty-two hundred the kitchen tarp had gone — staked into compact sand at five points, it pulled them all clean. By twenty-two-thirty we had moved both tents thirty metres west, into the lee of a low ridge. The fire we put out, deliberately. Wind plus open flame plus methane vapour is not a combination we accept.
“The guests slept fine. The crew did not.”
What we changed
- Every expedition now carries a second tarp set, in a different vehicle.
- We pre-scout two camp positions per night, not one.
- Anyone in the kitchen at night carries a head torch on red mode.
- We carry a hand-held anemometer and call camp re-position above 25 knots.
Most of what we do is invisible to the guest, on purpose. The two days they spent at Darvaza ended with a calm sunrise and a long drive home. The work that made that possible happened mostly at night.
