The Himalayan Towers of China

In the Western Sichuan province, between central China and the Tibetan Autonomous Region, there exist hundreds of mysterious stone towers, some of them over 200 feet tall. They dot the valleys and the foothills of the Himalayas, often clustered near villages where they have been repurposed as stables for yaks and ponies. Others are abandoned and in a state of disrepair; their wooden stairs gone and roof collapsed. Although they clearly exist for centuries, the purpose and origin of these structures remain a mystery, and even the local residents are ignorant of their history Photo: Munford/Wikimedia The towers were first brought to the attention of the outside world by French explorer Frederique Darragon, who went to Tibet in 1998 to research snow leopards, but instead fell under the spell of these enigmatic structures. Darragon spent the next five years studying the towers. She counted them, mapped them, photographed them, and even climbed them when possible to collect samples of wood from the beams for analysis. But when she talked to people living in proximity to the towers, she was surprised to learn that nobody knew who built them and for what purpose. A search among the texts in the local Buddhist monasteries was also unfruitful. However, she did find a few references to the towers in some Chinese annals and in the diaries of 19th-century European travelers to the region, but nobody made any attempts to study them or unravel the puzzle. The lack of local knowledge about the towers’ origin could be due to the region's history and geography. The region where the towers are found has been historically occupied by different mountain tribes who have maintained isolation for centuries. Due to the diverse nature of their origins and the fragmented terrain in which they live, the languages and dialects they speak are vastly different from one another.