A fiery crater has been burning in the Karakum Desert since 1971.

A cemetery with goat-horn bedecked gravestones.

This cavernous swimming spot doubles as a home to the largest known colony of bats in Central Asia.

A dictator's gold statue once rotated to face the sun on a 75-meter high marble tower.

Sumptous memorial to a controversial independence.

A huge monument to a bizarre book written by Turkmenistan’s longstanding dictator.

An eccentric dictator's take on a Turkmen version of Disneyland.

This harsh mountain path was built as a strange attempt to improve the health of Turkmen citizens.

If you want to get married in the White Marble City of Ashgabat, you should do it in this surreal disco ball building.

Complete town of 5,000 living out at sea on the world's first offshore oil platform.

Mysterious hillside with a continuously burning natural fire.

Home to nearly a third of the world's mud volcanoes, Azerbaijan is home to a messy, bubbling, and sometimes explosive landscape.

A shrine of fire worship built on top of a natural flame.

A gigantic collection of teeny, tiny books.

A bathhouse from the second Islamic Caliphate decorated with frescoes of constellations, pleasure gardens, and naked ladies.

Gladiators battle and chariots race daily in the ruins of a once-great Roman city.

The world's oldest map of the holy land gives us a fragmented glimpse of the layout of biblical nations.

A more chill but no less fascinating version of the famous ancient archeological site.

One man's labor of love, Amman's oldest home has become a time capsule with its doors permanently open to artists and guests.

This sprawling, formerly elite sporting complex in Amman, Jordan has become a local picnic spot.

Source for a sizable portion of Egypt's freshwater supply is more than an optical illusion.

An archaeological site believed to be the burial place of the "mother of us all."

Even King Tut was intrigued by the glass of the Great Sand Sea.

Ancient Egyptian relief, claimed to depict an electrical light.