Dasht-e Lut

DesertsKerman,Iran

The hottest ground measured on Earth, 80.8°C in southeastern Iran, its wind-carved ridges running unbroken for forty kilometres and best walked at sunset.

September·Closed

May–Sep

From around May into September the Lut becomes deadly hot. This is the hottest ground on Earth, with surfaces past 70°C and air highs climbing from the high thirties to the mid forties. No camp or tour runs, and the exact start and end dates shift from year to year.

Year-round The kaluts and the eastern dune sea stand year-round. This desert holds the record for the hottest ground temperature ever measured, and that heat comes only in high summer. Through the cool months, October into April, the deep desert is walkable and good for camping.

Dasht-e Lut, in southeastern Iran, is where satellites have measured the hottest ground on Earth, 80.8°C, and the heat is not the strangest thing about it. For forty kilometres the desert runs in parallel walls of earth, straight and unbroken, with flat corridors between them like streets. They are called kaluts, and they stand near Shahdad, the town on the western rim. A wind made them. Each summer a fierce gale funnels down the same line from the same direction, and over thousands of years it has blasted the soft clay out from between the ridges and left the hard ones standing, some 155 metres high. You walk in from the road, and the corridors are flat and easy going. They are also identical: there are no landmarks out here and every one looks like the last, which is why you keep the car in sight. At midday the walls are flat and grey and there is nothing to photograph. The place only turns on when the sun drops low enough to strike the ridges from the side. Then they go copper, and every wall lays a shadow that runs hundreds of metres past you across the sand. It happens fast, and the sky holds its colour long after the ridges have gone dark. East of the kaluts the stony plain gives way to an ocean of sand, the Rig-e Yalan, where the dunes rise hundreds of metres and the crests roll away from you in every direction. The fiercest heat is measured further north, on a black lava plateau called Gandom Beryan — roasted wheat, after a story about a load of grain that cooked where it lay. From about May into September none of this is walkable at all. Shahdad sat on a spur of the Silk Road, and its restored caravanserai still stands on the rim. A caravanserai existed for one purpose: to give a caravan walls, water and a safe night in country that offered neither shade nor help.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Spring and autumn only — March to April and late October to November bring warm days and cool nights; summer ground heat is genuinely lethal, so no one visits the deep Lut then.
Never enter alone — bring a local driver, far more water than you expect, sun cover and spare fuel; past Shahdad there is no shade, no phone signal and no water at all.
Aim for a moonless night — with no light pollution the Milky Way is dazzling, but a full moon drowns it out; desert nights turn cold fast, so pack a warm layer.
A 4x4 reaches the deep desert — the Shahdad kaluts sit right off a paved road, but the giant eastern dunes lie far out in soft sand, reachable only with an off-road vehicle.

Things to do

1
Watch the kaluts at sunset
Drive out to the kalut field near Shahdad late enough in the day that the sun strikes the ridges from the side rather than from overhead. At midday these earth walls look flat and grey; as the light drops they turn copper, and each ridge throws a shadow that runs for hundreds of metres across the sand. The change happens fast, so be in position before the sun reaches the horizon, and stay on afterwards, because the sky holds colour long after the ridges go dark.
2
Walk among the kaluts
The gaps between the ridges run straight and flat, like streets between walls of earth, and you can walk into them straight from the road near Shahdad. Up close you can see how they were made: the sides are scoured smooth along one line by the summer wind, and the softer clay that once filled the gaps has been blown away entirely. There are no landmarks out here and every corridor looks like the last, so keep the road or your vehicle in sight.
3
Stop at the Shahdad caravanserai
Shahdad, the town on the western rim of the desert, sat on a spur of the Silk Road, and its restored caravanserai is where traders and their pack animals stopped before or after crossing the sands. A caravanserai existed for one purpose: to give a caravan walls, water and a safe night in country where there was neither shade nor help.
4
Climb the mega-dunes of Rig-e Yalan
In the east the stony plain gives way to an ocean of sand, its dunes rising hundreds of metres. Climb a ridge as the light softens and the crests roll away to the horizon in every direction.