Okay, they're actually images of a place called Darvaza, or the "Burning Gates". Seems a 1950's Solviet drilling rig, searching for natural gas struck an underground cavern, resulting in a crater roughly 60 meters in diamatere and 20 meters deep. The natural gas is released in thousands of tiny vents all over the crater, and were set alight shortly after being discovered, as a safety measure. It has been burning ever since, filling the air with the smell of burning sulfer.
Pit BBQ anyone? All you need is a REALLY big grill and a couple thousand pounds of cow...
Whodda thought that the gates to the underworld would be found in a middle-eastern desert?
If you love travel and exotic locations, and if you need to spend a little time away from your latest spreadsheet or Indesign file, then you defintely need to find out where the hell Matt is.
I'm not going to go into rabid detail here, since, well, his site does it better than I ever could. I will however embed a video - the same one I posted on my Facebook page - and tell you that if you missed it on facebook, you need to watch it here. You need to because putting a smile on your face is my mission today, and this is sure to do it.
Of course, it will be followed by feelings of intense jealousy that YOU didn't get to go click your heels in all these exotic locales, but whatever. The smile was what I was after, and I can't be held liable for any after affects.
It has inspired me. I'm going to start not only throwing "the Wendy" wherever I go, but trying to get as many strangers as I can to do it with me when I'm in amazing places. May not be as entertaining as Matt's little dance, but it's something I can do to make the world a smaller place (and entertain myself in the process). Just imagine it...
The only thing better would be if I (like Matt) could find a corporate sponsor who supports my travel habit in the name of fun photos and videos for the internet.
Yeah.
Something else that I dug up in the course of making this blog entry. Very interesting - something I never knew that I absolutely needed to know!
