The Lut desert

Dasht-e Lut, the Lut desert, covers a vast basin in south-eastern Iran between the mountains of Kerman and the borderlands of Sistan. Dasht means plain. In 2016 it became the first natural site in Iran to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, recognised for some of the most spectacular wind-made landforms on Earth.

On its western edge, near the town of Shahdad, stand the kaluts: long ridges of sediment carved by the wind into rows of walls, towers and corridors, some tens of metres high. Geologists call such forms yardangs. Seen from the air they line up like a fleet of ships all pointing the same way, because the prevailing wind has shaped every one of them from the same direction.

Further east are sand seas with some of the tallest dunes in the world, stony plains of black gravel and salt flats. Satellite instruments have recorded land-surface temperatures here among the highest ever measured, around 70 °C in some years. Visitors usually come from Shahdad or Kerman in the cooler months and stay at desert camps, watching sunset turn the kaluts from tan to rust to violet, then a night sky with almost no artificial light.