There were once thousands of caravanserai, staging posts for the weary traveler, dotted throughout Asia, North Africa and the South-Eastern parts of Europe. The Silk Road, an important and extensive trans-continental network of routes, was dotted with them. Many still survive, but more, like the one in the Lut desert of Iran (above) are abandoned and slowly turning to dust.
Modern methods of transportation have meant that the caravanserai, where they are not fortunate enough to be restored and made in to hotels, slowly but surely rejoin the sand of the desert. However, you can still see the rising columns in the Lut example, above, which one day perhaps looked something more like the interior of the one to be found in Meybod (also in Iran, below).
