The Valley of Balls, Kazakhstan

The valley of balls or Torysh, as it’s called in Kazakh, is located at the Northern tip of the Western Karatau, close to the town of Shetpe in Western Kazakhstan. The area consist of numerous ball-like rock formations strewn across a wide range of steppe land. The balls come in different sizes, but most are 3-4 meters in diameter.

The balls are believed to be concretions —a hard, compact mass formed by the precipitation of minerals. They are often spherical and usually forms in sedimentary rock or soil. The phenomenon is not rare — examples of such concretions are found all over the globe. What is rare, however, is the size these concretions have reached. Concretions as large as those in valley of balls are found only at few places on earth. The Moeraki Boulders of New Zealand is another example.

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