Shillong, Mar 12: A team of 24 cavers explored some of the unknown caves in the state, including Lungchung Khur in Jaintia Hills, which has become the 10th longest cave in the country.
The exploration was part of the ‘Caving in the Abode of the Clouds Project’ that took place between February 2-28.
Lungchung Khur, the most significant find during the spelunking, is a river cave with an explored and mapped length of 13,618m. It is also the 9th longest limestone cave in India. The cave has a large river passage of up to 30m wide and high in places, huge relic passages over 20m wide by 15m high and a mixture of inlet passages, beautiful oxbows and boulder chokes.
The cave is noticeable for its calcite formations along much of its length and occupies a significant part of the eastern flank of the Muallian Spur in which previously no significant cave was known.
Four new caves
The team, which included international cavers, also explored four new caves in the Byrong area in East Khasi Hills, where eight caves were explored. These included Krem Riblai with 1,973m of passage, Krem Khla with 1,521m of passage, Krem Wallang with 1,393m of passage and Krem Shanguh 1 with 1,027m of passage.
The caves in Byrong were a mixture of seasonal sinks, active resurgences and shafts containing some excellent and well decorated active and relic passages.
In the Byrong area a total of 6,210m of previously un-mapped cave passage was explored and surveyed. Some passages and caves remain un-explored and it is known that there are other un-explored caves in the locality so a return will be made at a future date.
Thirteen previously unknown caves in an area known as Krem Soh Shrieh proved mainly to be blind shafts of between 8m to 26m in depth with the exception being Krem Soh Shrieh 2 that yielded 174m of passage to a depth of 46m.
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