Caving in the Abode of the Clouds
Once back in Shillong we met with the new crowd who had arrived for main expedition. This is the most geographically diverse expedition I have participated in, with cavers coming from Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, Serbia and India. After a further couple of packing and organising days we loaded up the Sumos (4x4 type car) and headed to the East Jaintia Hills.
The first part of the journey was on tarred roads, however it was slow going due to the large number of slow lorries. At one point we overtook a lorry, overtaking another lorry which was overtaking a third lorry, on a blind bend. The technique seems to be to beep your horn and flash lights as you are doing the dangerous overtake. Although it never seemed too dangerous as everyone expects there to be a vehicle on the wrong side of the road around every blind bend anyway.
After a quick lunch stop and the distribution of road beers we soon left the main road and travelled through small towns, the roads here were still tarred but there were numerous severe speed bumps with no markings. I’m not sure how our driver was spotting these as they were basically invisible, we only hit one at high speed. Perhaps it was the constant use of betel nut.
Betel nut is a popular drug in Asia, by chewing the nut from the areca palm with its leaf and lime (chemical not fruit) the user gets a sense of euphoria and is kept alert. This seemed to be working for our driver. The downside of chewing betel nut is that it stains your mouth and teeth bright red leaving you with a grisly looking smile.
We finally turned off the tarred road and trundled along a very bumpy rocky dirt track, two hours later we arrived at the village. Because of the elections the kids were on school holidays for February, therefore we could use the school buildings for a gear store and office. We unloaded the gear and set up our tents. Unfortunately there was very little flat ground as the camping area was in a small V shaped valley. This bonus of having a small 2 man tent is that the roll mat is the same length as the tent and you can’t slide off it!
The first few days were not too fruitful for us: we did some prospecting, found some very small caves and I even managed a chai-crawl across two villages looking for an absent village headman. However I did get to see some of the famous standing stones whilst we waited for him. We may not have found any caves that day but we did return to the camp with seven pumpkins we had purchased from the villagers.
Our luck soon changed however; Olly went to check out a cave shown to the group by a kid called Michael who had been bribed (with biscuits) to lead their group to a cave; and I went with Robin and Becks to check out “Steamy Cave” escorted by guide Klet.
We shot off at high speed following Klet down into the valley on a small path. After walking through, rice fields, banana plantations, bamboo forest and some small river gullies we dropped into a huge dry river bed. We then clambered over large slippery boulders for a further 45 minutes before arriving at some beautiful limestone pavement. There were a couple of tricky climbs which Klet easily hopped down, I managed to follow and Klet pointed to a small hole in the river bed from which steam was rising out. Robin and Becks managed to climb down a little downstream and around the corner was a much large cave entrance with a load of huge butterflies floating in the steam billowing out from it.
Robin climbed down a small drop in the entrance and reported that there was a 13m pitch (drop needing rope) into a huge canyon passage. We gleefully returned to the village via a more direct route straight up the hill through thick-ish jungle. The next day we returned with two teams, one to survey a small cave above the river bed and us to drop the pitch. Robin taught Becks how to bolt whilst Kit and I started the survey. Unfortunately after dropping the first pitch, which had an amazing circular rainbow as the sun hit the steam, there was very quickly a second pitch in Yorkshire pot style.
Luckily we could scavenge the small rope we had used as a handline on the river bed climbs for the next pitch. Kit, Becks and I were rather alarmed to hear a huge rumbling and crashing sound coming from the second pitch that Robin was part way down. Luckily he was just gardening (knocking down dangerous loose rocks). The spare rope wasn’t long enough and we had to head back to camp and return the next day with more rope.
We returned to camp via yet another different route through the jungle. It took another two trips with another two lots of rope (and another four different routes through the jungle) to reach the bottom of the pitches.
The problem with navigating to the cave was the lack of a path and the numerous areas of thick spiky plants in the jungle. We tried both conventional and unconventional navigation techniques (GPS way points and our own internal compasses) with varying degrees of success. I normally have a good memory for routes but after route number 6 everything looks familiar. Marcel and I had one rather embarrassing incident where we ended up going too far right to avoid thick bamboo forest and dropped into the river bed too far downstream. No problem we thought, we could just head upstream to the cave entrance, we were wrong, five minutes later we ended up at the bottom of a dry 10m unclimbable waterfall. It then took us an extra hour to backtrack and traverse across valley before descending in the correct place.
Once at the bottom of the pitches we realised that the boulders in the river bed on the surface were actually making up the ceiling 85m above us. We weren’t sure how these were being held up so decided not to walk over them on the surface anymore (Becks had actually already put her leg through a hole in the river bed). We had descended into a vast chamber full of huge house height limestone pinnacles, it was difficult to see across the chamber due to the amount of steam. Below this chamber the cave transforms into a beautiful clean washed canyon with clear blue/green pools.
Following the canyon we found a huge 45m aven and a large chamber with a number of ways on. Meanwhile Olly had finished his cave and there were very few other options to be explored around the village. The decision was made to move the camp to Muallian; the village at the end of the road. Interestingly this is a Jaintia village whereas the previous was Khasi. This means that the village speaks a completely different language even though it is only a 40 minute walk between the two.
Our new campsite was much flatter but busier as we were occupying the village football pitch. We now had a 45min drive, an hour long very steep walk to the cave and then an hour of caving to the end of the survey (including of 80m abseiling on rope). Robin had been suggesting camping at the cave entrance and we all now agreed.
We planned a 2 night 3 day trip with 6 of us/two survey teams. Robin did a great job organising the food but we did question the 1.5kg of powdered milk he had packed. He explained that powdered milk is a lifesaver but we managed to wrestle him down to taking only 500g. After a lift up the road and a rather heavily laden walk down the hill Robin decided to stay at the new camp and set up whilst the rest of us went surveying. We returned to a meal of dhal, meat curry and rice cooked on an open fire and for those that had forgotten a plate, dinner was served on banana leaves.
We slept out on the open limestone pavement on the edge of the dry river bed. It made a nice change to wake up to bird song rather than church bells and cockerels from 05:30 in the morning. Tim did note how mad it was to be sleeping in the Indian jungle, we had to persuade him that there were no tigers. We didn’t mention the wild cat footprints we had seen in the cave, or that a tiger had been seen in the village (although this was 10 years previous).
I didn’t sleep particularly well the first night as to save weight I had only carried in a thin foam mat rather than my Thermarest. But after a tasty breakfast of granola with milk powder and an expedition up the river bed to collect 20l of water for that night's dinner we headed back into the cave.
We were all excited about today’s trip, we had finished surveying some smaller side passages and were about to head into the unknown stream-way which we could hear rumbling in the distance. We attempted to survey with two teams in the same area of the cave such that we could take turns being the first people walking up the new stream way. Unfortunately this over complicated things.
After finishing a particularly unpleasant and loose small side passage in which Uros (who is very tall and broad) managed to fill, and therefore block the Bluetooth signal from the Distox (laser device we use for surveying) our group headed out to cook dinner.
Uros stayed with Robin and Tim to continue up the stream way, Uros is not a fan of water (despite being a cave diver) but somehow he managed to traverse around a lake and climb a small waterfall whilst retaining dry feet. Unfortunately the group then met a lake which was swimming depth. This was a convenient time for them to finish surveying for the day.
After dinner and some rum around the campfire we turned in for the night. I slept much better as I dosed up with drowsy anti-histamine tablets, another breakfast of oats, and milk powder and we headed back in for the final day of caving. We split into two teams; three to survey a small pitch that hadn’t been descended and the “swimming team” to cross the lake. We discussed what was the best option for crossing the lake as we didn’t have wet suits or buoyancy aids. I thought that swimming in a caving over suit would be impossible as it would drag you down. Therefore the plan was to strip down to our underwear and pack our caving suits and thermals in a dry bag which could be carried across. We actually had a extra lake to wade across (as Uros’s route the previous day had very loose boulders), then a waterfall climb before the swimming depth lake. We arrived in the stream way, stripped off and bagged our clothes, luckily the water is quite warm in Meghalaya. I did feel slightly ridiculous in underwear, knee pads and pink wellies, and also quite exposed climbing the sharp limestone on the waterfall.
We arrived at the deep lake and started the survey, we have waterproof drums to keep the survey instruments dry, but I always try and keep these out the water when transporting other peoples kit in case the drum leaks. Holding the drum above my head I confidently stepped into the lake. I was definitely over confident and I instantly sunk above my head as I forgot how hard it is to swim in wellies. Some spluttering later I somehow managed to flail to the wall where I could cling on and drag myself to the other side. Tim who had already got across said this was quite an amusing sight, but he was impressed that despite my head being underwater my arm holding the drum of instruments remained defiantly in the air.
On the other side we changed and continued to survey, disappointingly the huge stream passage quickly went into a low chamber which had boulder collapse in every direction likely caused by a fault line. We finished the survey off and exited the cave. Four of us headed back up the hill, but Tim and Robin decided to stay another two nights to have another poke at the boulder choke and try to find a way through.
Unfortunately they were unsuccessful and when we returned to the cave after a rest day we tidied up a few bits of the survey and de-rigged. There was a lot of kit to come back up the hill and Tim gallantly did three trips that day whilst we carried the ropes out the cave. My rucksack was so heavy climbing back up the hill I couldn’t lift it onto my back but had to get into it, from the floor by putting the straps on and rolling onto hands and knees before getting up.
Whilst steamy cave (Krem Um Ladaw) had come to an end Olly had been spending a few days in Retdung Khur, this was originally thought to sump quite quickly but actually after a maze section it broke out into stomping beautiful stream way. Olly had proven to be very useful and was referred to as the little monkey for climbing some difficult climbs and even rescuing Pinsham’s wellies that he managed to loose in one of the swims.
Olly and I had one last trip together in Retdung Khur where we went to finish off a bit of the maze surveying and so I could see some of the pretty stream way. We were changing at the cave entrance when it started raining, I was a little worried given the small cave entrance is in a river bed but Olly assured me that everything would be fine. We ended up having a short trip due to limited battery in the survey instruments. It actually didn’t stop raining all evening and by the following morning the football field was a big muddy puddle. That morning we took down the camp and waited for the cars to collect us for our journey back to Shillong. We were not hopeful the sumos (fake 4x4s) would made along the very very slippy now liquid mud road. Luckily although the sumos didn’t get through a 4x4 pick up lorry did, and with Simon doing multiple trips up and down the 1.5 hour long "road" we made it to where the cars had dared drive to. I was super impressed with Simon’s off-road driving abilities as when we were seemingly gliding across the mud sideways towards some kind of danger he would somehow save us from it at the last moment. We didn’t even get stuck once!
With us safely in the first trip up to the waiting cars we headed back to Shillong. Within a couple of hours it started biblically raining, we hoped everyone had made it up the dirt road as it was terrible driving conditions even on the tarred one. People didn’t seem to be using their headlamps in the thunderstorm but just drove everywhere with their hazards on instead. We made it back to Shillong and headed to the final night party hoping that eventually everyone else would turn up.
By some miracle everyone made it back to Shillong before 10pm and we all had some drinks to celebrate both this, the end of the expedition and that this years findings tipped the grand total of cave discovered in Meghalaya since 1992 to 500km with 12km being discovered this year.
