About 90 kilometres north of Gonbad-e Kavus, deep in the green hills of the Turkmen Sahra near the Turkmenistan border, the Khaled Nabi cemetery is one of the strangest archaeological sites in Iran. Some 600 standing stones — many distinctly phallic in shape — march across a hillside above the small shrine of Khaled Nabi, a pre-Islamic religious figure honoured by both Turkmens and Iranians. Nobody knows for certain who carved them, when, or why.
The drive from Gonbad-e Kavus runs through some of the most beautiful country in northern Iran: rolling green steppe in spring and early summer, dusty brown by August. The road is rough and a four-wheel-drive is recommended in wet weather. The site is best visited as a long day trip with a driver who knows the way; the shrine has a small caretaker but no signage.