History of Caves in Meghalaya Before Indian Independence, the British Empire ruling over the north eastern states had an extensive interest in caving. They treated it as an adventure sport and continued to form more caves in the state of Meghalaya. In the year 1844, a British explorer named Lt. Yule discovered Krem Mawmluh, which became the first cave to be explored. This was a major achievement and the news was covered by the Bengal Gazette. And eventually, from 1990s onwards, an exclusive organisation named the Meghalaya Adventurers Association (MAA) has been carrying out annual explorations in association with European speleologists, cavers from India, experts from other regions of the world, the Indian Army and the Indian Navy. The Siju Cave in Garo Hills was studied in 1922 when 1,200 m was explored and four species of cave life forms were identified. Since the establishment of MAA in 1994, the explored caves account for only about 5 percent of the total underground passages in the state of Meghalaya. Number of Caves in Meghalaya Recent reports from the year 2015 have revealed that the state of Meghalaya has about 1,580 caves, out which only 980 have been fully or properly explored. The longest cave in Meghalaya and also in the country is the Krem Liat Prah in the Jaintia Hills, which is listed among the longest caves in the world. Mentioned below is a list of the 20 longest caves in Meghalaya:
Conservation of Caves of Meghalaya The prime component that was used to construct the caves of Meghalaya was limestone but currently, an upsurge in limestone mining for the cement industry has become a major threat to these caves of Meghalaya. Under the guidance of the ecologists and speleologists, the Government of Meghalaya took measures to stop limestone mining in the vicinity of the limestone caves in the state. |