Meghalaya 2017 Expedition Week 2

chunky

Well-known member
Sunday 12th February

Sielkan-Pielkleing Pouk Through trip

A day off from expedition caving to do the most sporting through trip and difficult photo shoot I have done to date.
A dozen of us would be on the trip with half of us heading down the fallen tree trunks to start the through trip from the bamboo lake, whilst the rest of the group headed for the main Sielkan entrance.
The majority of this trip is swimming in the vast streamway, only broken by frequent impressive gour pools, before jumping from them back in to the streamway to continue. The only respite from this is near the resurgence where large breakdown chamber is found before returning to the water to exit the cave.
Oana, our resident bat expert came along as she had offered the challenge of trying to capture one of the largest roosts in India with an estimated half a million bats. This proved a real challenge, not only because there were just 3 of us to try and make this happen with limited amounts of lighting gear, but the entire time we were setting up and shooting we were being covered in Bat pee and guano!
The entire experience was just awesome and only marred during the 2 hour trek back to camp by Chris Smart miss-footing and face planting a rock. Fortunately although he lost half his front tooth, the nerve was not exposed and he hadn't caught any soft flesh, so aside from spoiling his good looks he was OK.

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The group at the begining of the through trip

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Urs helps Oana on to one of the many Gour sections

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The largest of the Gours on the through trip

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With an estimated half a million bats this roost was as impressive as it was smelly!

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Monday 13th

Sielkan Pouk - Perfect Passage

Today we would head in as part of Georg Baeumler's survey team to take a look at a question mark at the far end of perfect passage. Georg would be keen to grab a couple of photographs here as he was part of the team who discovered this stunning part of the cave.
Again this would require a swim in following the through trip route, but we were soon climbing out over massive breakdown and in to some beautifully decorated passage. On we continued as the passage size shrank until we were eventually crawling down the question mark to be surveyed. Oana had joined us as Georg had described seeing prints in the calcite and mud at the far end of the passage. These did indeed turn out to be bear prints!
Georg and Alexandra continued on, too small for a larger group to survey ahead and so Oana and I grabbed a couple of photographs as we retraced our steps.
An hour later we were re-joined by Georg and a grey looking Alex. The sickness bug had struck again and come on without warning. We kept close for support as we begun to exit. It had taken a couple of hours on the way in but would take us over 3 hours to get back to camp with Alexandra being very ill most of the way.

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The Stalagmite Forest

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A 77mm lens cap for scale of the bear prints in the new passageway.

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An unusual Stalacmite formation

Tuesday 14th

Back to Krem Sakwa

Monday night would become my turn to come down with the bug, though I didn't get hit anywhere near as hard by it as others had. I had spent much of the night ill, but come morning my stomach had settled down but I felt very weak.
I had urged Chris Howes and Judith to go and photo the upstream sections we had discovered earlier in the week and they had not only done so, but reported back that they had pushed on and discovered stunning cascades and beautifully formed stream passage. Having seen Chris's photographs and knowing this could be my last chance to visit this cave, and since Mark Tringam's team was missing Yorkshire Dave (again a casualty of the sickness bug) I volunteered myself.
I knew the cave pretty well by now so told the others as I wasn't going to be up to full caving speed I would get a head start and leave camp an hour before them.
Finding the walk in a lot tougher than my previous trips I admitted to myself that I wasn't going to be able to haul in my usual 10kg of camera gear and left it where I met the streamway.
My caving speed was around halved as I picked my way along and I was glad I had grabbed a life jacket for the 60m swim.
After an hour and a half I reached the cascade I had seen in Chris's photographs. Climbing to the top I laid down under a survey point and drifted off to sleep.
I had no idea how long I had dozed but was surprised the others hadn't caught me up. I waited a another quarter of an hour and then headed back down stream to check on them.
After an hour I saw headlamps ahead. They had ticked off a couple of loose ends on the way in and taken longer than expected.
I was pretty knackered by the time we got back to the top of the cascades, but as surveying isn't a fast job I found myself more than able to do my job.
After just over 300m we approached a roar of water and rounded a corner to find a water filled chamber with 6m waterfall entering. This reminded me of top waterfall in OFD and would be just as impossible to climb without gear and so spelled the end of the days surveying.
Mark Tringham took video as we exited which meant I could keep up with them on the way out and the guys kindly allowed me a couple of shots of the downstream section before we exited the cave.

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Mark and Paul in the lower streamway

Wednesday 15th

Krem Um Sngad Khaddum (Dirty Bat Cave)

Another big walk in, we split the journey with a visit to Paradise Pool for a quick dip before continuing on. Marcel had visited with a team the day before but been turned around by a climb down that would require at least a hand line. Chris and I had joined as there were fruit bats at the entrance and we wanted to try and get a shot of them flying out as we entered.
We approached quietly but found that there were very few bats around and were disappointed we would not get the chance for the shot. Chris photographed the entrance passage to the climb and I continued on with the survey team in my normal capacity of Ferret. We were soon at what was beginning to look like the end of the cave and the others went ahead surveying toward a daylight shaft whilst I photographed the huntsman spiders in the lower section. Whilst doing this I was sure I could hear the roar of a water and ducked under a shelf to squeeze through in to a large draughting rift passage. I headed on and turned a corner expecting to find a waterfall or streamway and came face to face with thousands of fruit bats. Oana would later identify these as Eonycteris spelaea, unique to this species is the clap of their wings, thought to be used as a type of echo location. I  looked up to find tens of thousands of red eyes peering back from the ceiling. After heading back to let the others know I headed back to the chamber, but this time there were far fewer bats as most had exited another daylight shaft at the corner of the chamber, the draught had gone and it was strangely quiet. What I had mistaken for the roar of water had actually been the sound of bat wings!
Before all the bats disappeared I managed to convince the others to let me grab a quick shot before taking over the disto and continuing the surveying down in to flat out crawls filled with debris and spiders. We lost one and then another of the survey team as the going became less pleasant and at the point at which we were going to call it a day Paul found a single lead. He and I pushed through in to small inlet passage and determined that it wasn't going to stop any time soon before we headed back to join the others for the long walk back to camp.

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Judith in Paradise pool

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Paul in the newly discovered main chamber

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One of the many Huntsman spiders in the cave.

Thursday 16th
Krem Rupa

This would be our last day before breaking camp for the half way stage and we were to survey a lead in what had been described as one of the prettiest cave finds of the expedition.
We were soon making our way in past pretty passage to a lovely gour section named Fairy Pool. Here Diego and Chris had taken photos of the entrance series and a ladder had been rigged to bypass the delicate area from traffic.
Our survey area would be very different from the formations of the entrance section. We surveyed through huge rift passage and after a couple of hours reached a massive boulder choke which completely filled the passage. There were no further leads on our section and so we re-grouped with the other survey team before heading back to camp for beer and festivities before breaking camp.

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Marcel examines the cave pearls in the entrance series.

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A traverse line is installed to protect the delicate pools below.

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The end of the line for the first half's surveying as our passage ends in this enormous boulder choke.

Friday 17th would be spent travelling back just outside Shillong where Saturday 18th there was a party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the expedition itself. With relatively few hangovers Sunday 19th would be another travel day to Mawsynram where the expedition had hired a sports hall for the group. This was something of a culture shock after having been camping in the jungle, but the caving would prove no less exhilarating!
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
Wonderful photos, Chunky, some of your best I reckon.

Thanks so much for posting the above, really is much appreciated, Jane  (y)

Going to read the words now having looked at the pictures  ;)
 

chunky

Well-known member
Thank you all. It's great to get such nice comments 👍

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 
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