Around 1250 BC, a king of Elam called Untash-Napirisha built a holy city in the plain of what is now Khuzestan in south-western Iran, and at its centre he raised a ziggurat, a stepped temple tower, to the god Inshushinak. Chogha Zanbil, as it is now called, is one of the best-preserved ziggurats anywhere, its millions of mud bricks still standing in great tiers above the flat land, some stamped with inscriptions in the Elamite script. It was the first site in Iran to be listed by UNESCO, in 1979, and it remains a powerful, almost eerie place.
The city was never finished and was later sacked by the Assyrians, but the ziggurat survived, buried and protected by its own collapse until excavations in the twentieth century. Walking around it, you see the walls of the sacred precinct, temples and the remains of an advanced water system. The size of the bricks, the precision of the walls and the inscriptions give a vivid sense of a civilisation that rivalled Babylon.
The landscape is flat, hot and wide, with the Zagros mountains rising in the distance and the Karun and Dez rivers bringing life to the plains. Riding here is mostly about long straight roads, often in intense heat, with fast-moving traffic, trucks and the occasional wandering animal. Summer temperatures in Khuzestan are among the highest on earth, often above forty-five degrees, so this is a winter destination, when days are mild and pleasant.
Shushtar and Shush, each about thirty kilometres away, are the nearest towns, with fuel, food and lodging. Shush is the site of ancient Susa, one of the great cities of the ancient world, with its excavations and a castle built by French archaeologists in the nineteenth century, as well as the tomb of the prophet Daniel. Shushtar is famous for its historic hydraulic system, a complex of dams, canals and mills that is also listed by UNESCO.
Local food includes rich stews, rice dishes and fish from the rivers, with strong flavours of herbs and spices. Come between November and March, when the weather is kindest. Visit Chogha Zanbil in the late afternoon, when the low sun turns the bricks gold and the shadows stretch across the plain, and stand in silence before a monument more than three thousand years old.