The desert around Erbent is not featureless. The dune systems south of the village include barchan dunes — crescent-shaped, mobile, and sometimes 20 metres high — that shift visibly over months and years. Older residents track their movement the way a farmer tracks weather. Between the dunes, wind-scoured flats of hardpan support sparse saxaul scrub, a woody desert shrub whose deep root system taps moisture that nothing else can reach.
Wildlife is more abundant than the landscape suggests. Sand monitors, horned vipers, and various lizard species are regularly encountered in the early morning. The Karakum is also a migration corridor for birds moving between Siberia and South Asia, and October and April bring waders and raptors through the oasis in numbers that seem incongruous in such a dry landscape. A driver or guide from Erbent can take you several kilometres into the desert by vehicle; attempting to walk long distances without a local is genuinely dangerous in summer.