A CAVER'S PARADISE - MEGHALAYA, INDIA

Pics courtesy MMA

Meghalaya is a cavers’ paradise and so far a total of 551 km have been explored and mapped from 1992 and experts say there is more to be discovered.

 

One of the renowned cavers from the state, Brian Daly founder of Meghalaya Adventurers Association said, this year alone cavers from UK, Ireland, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, USA, and India explored and mapped 13,895m of new cave passage.

 

The 2024 caving expedition took place earlier this year. This consisted of a week-long pre-expedition that focused on exploration in the vicinity of the village of Sakhain situated some 5 km south of Sutnga in East Jaintia Hills District.

 

In the Sakhain, 10 new caves were explored yielding a total of 1,458m of new cave passage. All of the caves were situated at the edge of the sandstone plateau and were almost all associated with waterfalls at the base.

 

This was then followed by a two-and-a-half-week duration main expedition that focused on the area around the villages of Tlang Moi and Muallian, both located on the southernmost tip of the Shnongrim Ridge. The international exploration team comprised 29 members.

 

Some of the new caves explored were in the form of deep shafts. The deepest of these was Trevor Khur which had an entrance pitch of 152m depth and is Meghalaya and India’s deepest known single pitch to date.