Mysterious Strange Towers in the Desert

Mysterious Strange Towers in the Desert

Mysterious Strange Towers in the Desert is a cultural tourism attraction.

Mysterious Strange Towers in the Desert

In the summer of 1957, Kerim, serving as a translator and guide, led a Sino-Soviet joint expedition team of eight people. Among them was a Kazakh named Donggaba Yi, who lived by the Ergong River in Jimusaer, and another was a Uyghur from Turpan named Tarefu. They rode twelve camels deep into the vast and boundless Junggar Desert for surveying. One day, they spotted a bright yellow, dazzling mysterious object in the distance. When they got closer, they realized that the bright yellow, towering object was actually a cone-shaped tower resembling a pyramid. Intense beams of light shot out from the tower. The Soviets marked it on the map, then reluctantly left the strange tower and continued on their way. About one kilometer further, the expedition members discovered a second tower. Going even further, there was another one. In total, they found five equally spaced strange towers, shimmering with mysterious rays like navigation beacons across the desolate and barren desert.

After passing the magical strange towers, the expedition members continued northwest for some distance before they came upon a red sand mountain lying ahead. Upon reaching the red mountain, they stopped to rest. At that moment, they noticed a fox darting past, flashing with a halo of light, nimbly slipping into a small black hole at the foot of the red mountain.

Kerim and 28-year-old Soviet explorer Mr. Ivanov, holding shovels, walked up to the hole and began digging. After digging for a while, the sand on the cave roof started to pour down noisily. After some time, a large dark red iron door appeared behind the small hole, leading to an even bigger cave. The expedition members quickly gathered around. Then, with Kerim holding a long flashlight and Ivanov aiming a submachine gun, the two ventured into the cave. When they had gone nearly a hundred meters inside, in the dim light of the flashlight, they spotted a huge, shadowy, writhing mass up ahead.

Ivanov promptly fired his submachine gun, unleashing a burst of bullets. As the gunfire echoed, they also heard a fluttering, rustling noise filling the air. They couldn’t figure out what was happening. It wasn’t until they retreated back to the cave entrance that they understood. The second time they entered the cave, at the spot where Ivanov had fired, they found that they had shot a giant python. The python’s head was shattered by the bullets, and its tail was almost severed. Ivanov used a dagger to cut open the python’s belly, and they saw it was stuffed full of pigeon feathers and bones. It turned out the python had been feasting on pigeons. They called the others into the cave, hoping to pull the python out, but it was too heavy. After great effort, they managed to move it just a little.

They left the red mountain and the mysterious cave, trudging through the vast, silent desert. In the distance, they spotted large patches of lush green “vegetable fields,” with perfectly round “cabbages” growing vibrantly. The expedition members, amazed, rushed toward the fields on their camels. But upon closer inspection, they realized they were all stones that closely resembled cabbages. Later, the team also discovered many other strange phenomena—for example, objects that looked from afar like neatly arranged dumplings, but up close were also stones, with even fingerprint-like impressions clearly visible. The members wanted to break them apart, but the Soviet experts stopped them and carefully wrapped them up to be taken back to the research institute.