Man Entering The Shrine of Bibi Doust, near Zabol, Sistan and Baluchistan, Iran
Zabol, also transliterated as Zābul is the capital city of Zabol County, Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Iran. Zabol lies on the border with Afghanistan. Referred to as Sistan until the late 1920s, the city was renamed Zabol by Reza Shah Pahlavi. As per the 2006 census, its population was 130,000. Zabol is located near Lake Hamun and the region is irrigated by the Helmand River. Lake Hamun is a seasonal lake that is often dry. The people of Zabol are predominantly Persians who speak a variant of the Persian language and known as Sistani or Seistani which is very similar to Dari, also known as Afghan Persian, and a minority of Baloch who speak Balochi, a Northwestern Iranian language. Zabol is connected by road to Zaranj across the border of Afghanistan. The Delaram-Zaranj Highway provides road connectivity to the rest of Afghanistan. Zabol thus provides Afghanistan access to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf through the Port of Chabahar. The Zabol area is well known for its "120-day wind" (bād-e sad-o-bist-roz), a highly persistent dust storm in the summer which blows from north to south. The disappearance in the 2000s of the nearby Hamoun wetlands has exacerbated the dusty conditions in Zabol, leading the World Health Organization to name Zabol the most polluted city in the world in 2016. A 2017 study in the journal Preventive Medicine suggested that the harm from 30 minutes of cycling outdoors in Zabol's polluted air would outweigh the benefits of the exercise.
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Location: Shrine of Bibi Doust, near Zabol, Sistan and Baluchistan, Iran
Photo credit: © FO Travel / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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