Sculpted by the wind
Dasht-e Lut stretches across Kerman and Sistan-Baluchestan provinces. Its western edge is a city of kaluts, giant ridges of earth carved by the wind into shapes like ruined castles. In the centre, parallel ridges and furrows run for more than 150 kilometres, and in the southeast stand some of the tallest sand dunes in the world, up to about 300 metres high.
In 2005 a NASA satellite measured the ground here at 70.7 °C, one of the hottest land surface temperatures ever recorded. In 2016 it became Iran’s first natural site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Visitors come for the silence and for night skies dark enough to see the Milky Way from horizon to horizon.
