The 2024 Caving in the Abode of the Clouds Expedition took place from January 28 to February 22, with several kilometres of new caves documented.
The expedition consisted of a week-long pre-expedition that focused on exploration in the vicinity of the village of Sakhain, situated some 5km south of Sutnga in East Jaintia Hills. Exploration here took place from January 29 to February 2.
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. This part of the expedition took place from February 3 to February 21.
As has become the tradition with the Caving in the Abode of the Clouds Expeditions, the multinational expedition team included cavers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, USA and India, with cavers from the Meghalaya Adventurers Association and others comprising eight individuals, and the team at its largest being 29 in number.
In the Sakhain area, 10 new caves were explored, yielding a total of 1,458m of new cave passages in total. Notable amongst these were Ur Selle with 373m of passage, Urluri with 346m of passage and Rong Kso 3 with 314m of passage. All of the caves were situated at the edge of the sandstone plateau on which the village of Sakhain is situated and were almost all associated with waterfalls at the base of which the streams running off of the plateau sank into caves. Exploration in this area is now more or less complete.
In the Muallian/Tlang Moi area, the exploration built on the work of previous expeditions in 2020, 2022 and 2023 and focused on extending known caves and exploring new caves where in previous years entrances had been located but not entered. In respect of the previously known and partially explored caves the magnificent river system of Krem Rynjang or Retdung Khur was extended from 20,445m to 23,219m, elevating it from India’s seventh longest cave to India’s third longest and the second longest known cave in limestone.
The Pynnoh Um Sngad/Ram Khur System was extended from 14,951m to 20,459m, taking it from India’s eighth to India’s seventh longest cave or the sixth longest cave in limestone.
Regretfully, repeated attempts to physically link the Retdung Khur and Pyynod Um Sngad/Ram Khur systems to create a 45-plus kilometre system in Meghalaya were not successful and despite the two systems being less than 200m apart and certainly hydrologically connecting, the remaining leads that were pushed in each either ended in draught-less boulder collapses or sumps. Attempts to physically connect the hydrologically connected Um Ladaw to Retdung Khur were also not successful either by digging or climbing avens (vertical shafts). However, the aven climbing added 143m of new passage to the Um Ladaw system taking it to 3,320m in length.
Several significant new caves were explored in the Muallian area, such as Rebung Kung 2, which yielded 1,896m of passage and Rebung Kung Maul, with 1,604m of passage. Both caves began with a series of entrance pitches that intersected beautifully decorated stream passages. In addition to this, another six new caves of lesser length were explored.
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/India’s deepest known single pitch to date. Whilst just exceeding the previously known deepest (Zong Khur) at 142m, the new cave has neither the size nor stature of Zong Khur, which remains one of Meghalaya’s most impressive single shafts
At the conclusion of the 2024 exploration, a total of 13,895m of new cave passage had been explored and mapped. This takes the total combined length of known cave passages that have been explored and mapped in Meghalaya since systematic cave exploration commenced in 1992 to 551km in total. Evidence suggests that considerably more cave passage awaits exploration.
