Khalid Nabi

Khalid Nabi is a shrine on a ridge in the rolling grass hills of the northern Golestan steppe, close to the border, associated with a pre-Islamic prophet in local tradition and visited by Turkmen and Iranian pilgrims. Around it spreads a cemetery of several hundred stone markers, some over a metre and a half tall, carved into shapes that are variously described as stylised human forms, and which have attracted a good deal of speculation and no settled explanation; their date is uncertain and estimates range widely. The setting is the other half of it: open green steppe in spring, rolling to the horizon in every direction with almost no trees, which is a landscape found nowhere else in Iran. Two associated shrines sit on nearby hills.

What you actually see

• Hundreds of carved stone markers - tall shaped stones across the hillside.
• The hilltop shrine - the tomb the cemetery gathers around.
• Open green steppe - rolling grassland unlike anywhere else in Iran.
• Associated shrines nearby - two further tombs on neighbouring hills.

When to go

April to June, when the steppe is green and the wildflowers are out; it is brown and hard the rest of the year. Half a day. The track in is rough and impassable after rain.

Honest expectations

The explanations offered for the stones are speculation and the guides state them as fact; the honest position is that nobody knows. It is a border area and checks are possible. The track needs a capable vehicle. There are no facilities and no shade.

Nearby

Kalaleh is south-west; Gonbad-e Qabus lies further south.