The Kharan Desert, also known locally as the “Sandy Desert”, is located in northwest Balochistan. The Kharan Basin is known as a closed basin because the entire basin’s catchment water is used for agriculture and domestic requirements. The Kharan Desert area consists of shifting sand dunes with an underlying pebble-conglomerate floor. The moving dunes reach heights of between 15 and 30 meters.
Level areas between the dunes are a hard-topped pan when dry and a treacherous, sandy-clay mush when wet. The barren wastes that occupy almost half of Iran, with its continuation into Kharan in Pakistan, form a continuous stretch of absolute barrenness from the alluvial fans of the Alborz mountains in the north to the edge of the plateau in Balochistan, more than 1,200 kilometres to the southeast. In altitude these central deserts slope from about 1,000 m in the north to about 250 m on in the southwest. Average annual rainfall throughout these deserts is well under 100 mm. The desert includes areas of inland drainage and dry lakes (hamuns). The Gowd-e Zereh (lake basin) in Iran, which occasionally receives excess drainage, is separated from Kharan in Pakistan by the low Chaghai hills, which, with the highlands around the extinct volcano Koh-e Tafta’n, cause the Mashkel river to form a lake. The surface of the Hamun-i-Mashkhel, which is some 85 kilometers long and 35 kilometers wide, is littered with sun-cracked clay, oxidized pebbles, salty marshes and crescent-shaped moving sand dunes. The area is known particularly for its constant mirage and sudden severe sand-storms.