Volume 3 of this magnificent series continues its magical journey through the caves of Meghalaya, and each volume has surpassed the preceding one. The book is rich with pictures, maps, and easily understandable explanations that bring technical details to life even for the lay reader. Thomas Arbenz and his group have bestowed a munificent gift to the people of Meghalaya in particular, and to nature lovers all over the world.
The first volume (2012) covered the caves of the Pala Range and Kopili Valley, and the second one (2016), described the North Shnongrim and the Liat Prah Cave Systems. Each book is attractively brought out, one can’t help but pick it up. The vivid colours, bright pictures, detailed maps, clear font, and neat layout provide a visual feast, and an invitation to delve into the text.
Over the decades, from 1992, the multiple expeditions by this team, represent the golden age of caving exploration in Meghalaya. Whilst more terrain needs to be explored, the book already describes Meghalaya as “one of the world’s great caving regions”.
Many of the caves or cave openings are known to locals and bear local descriptive names. But the innards of the caves have been cartographed for the first time and the various cave features have been named by the team. While some provide clues to the appearance of the passages and speleothems (formations like stalagmites, stalactites, drapes, flowstones, and cave pearls), other names are contrived whimsically. Take Krem Wah Ryngo which has a labyrinth of passages and streamways with monikers like Penny Lane, Liverpool Lime Street and Abbey Road and topographical features called Fool on a Hill, Rocky Racoon, and the luminescent richly decorated chamber called Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
So, the book makes easy reading, and though a monumental amount of dry data has been collected and collated, the technical aspects are dealt with lightly. The vast assemblage of detail has been classed into chapters that divide up the caving regions, and these are intermixed with accounts of the biological life of the caves with separate sections on crustaceans, fish, bats, birds and other cave creatures. Geology and ecology are presented in their natural equilibrium.
The technical portion of each chapter is preceded by a story like narrative of discovery and anticipation. Here is a sample from “The Exploration of Pielkhlieng Pouk”, an epic expedition that eventually mapped 20.52 km of cave passages.
“We camped in Lumshnong in 1996. From here we would roam the nearby hills and forests, finding and surveying caves of extraordinary beauty. We were really excited about the beauty of these caves and their massive stream passages, which continued for kilometres. As they often led into sumps (a passage in a cave that is submerged under water), the question where the resurgences (the reappearance of a river at the surface after it has spent some time running underground), occupied us more and more.” (Returning in 1998 to the Luna River) …we found “A narrow path traversed the steep escarpment towards the stream and after a turn-off we saw a cave entrance so huge we could never have dared dreaming of it. (After several minutes), “We were standing on top of a boulder, looking over a flowstone terrace at the stream flowing out of the cave.”
In the years that followed, discovery followed discovery, with ever deeper and longer caves being mapped. As of 2020, they have recorded the longest cave and the longest limestone cave in the Indian subcontinent Liat Phrah 31.07km, the longest sandstone cave, Krem Puri, 25.317 km and the deepest cave, Synrang Pamiang, 317m.
The volumes have taken the reader through the different cave regions of the state. Some of the earliest explorations have been covered in the third volume. This volume describes the early struggles of uncertain expectations and the challenges of unexplored terrain in a foreign landscape, both physical and cultural. What has emerged is a monumental documentation of Meghalaya’s geological glory.
Copies are available from: Brian D. Kharpran Daly, Pansy Cottage, Mission Compound, Shillong 793002 (M) 9856006945/8787846268. Online orders: WhatsApp Kynmaw at +91 70059 88125 or email at [email protected]