Shillong, April 23: Meghalaya is a cavers’ paradise, and so far, a total of 551 km have been explored and mapped since 1992, and experts say there is more to be discovered.
One of the renowned cavers from the state, Brian Daly, founder of the Meghalaya Adventurers Association, said that this year alone, cavers from the UK, Ireland, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, USA, and India explored and mapped 13,895 m 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 deep and is Meghalaya and India’s deepest known single pitch to date.
