Sudwala Caves - Inside the caves

I have been informed that I did omit some information about being inside of the caves. That was an ooopsie on my part. Just as we entered the caves, where the reception desk is, we could immediately feel the cool breeze, which was nice after climbing up from the car. Even from the reception area, we could see that the walls had small streams of water here and there that still flow to this day. Our guide arrived and we began to explore a very small part of the caves that go on for who knows how far. He explained that the walls of the caves were dolomite and continued to explain how the stalagmites and stalactites were formed. The water that seeps into the caves have high concentrations of minerals in it, as the water drips from the top, mineral deposits begin to form on the stalagmites at the top and as the water drips down stalacites begin to build up from the bottom up. Over the course of several million years (and in this case, many more millions of years to come) they will eventually meet to form a column. There were several columns that had already formed as we went deeper into the caves.

Here is the interesting part, as we moved into the first demonstration area, he turned the lights on. I'm assuming that these lights run off of a generator since I seriously doubt there are power lines running up this mountain! The first area was an old camp site from a tribe who was at war with his brother's tribe (please don't ask for names, they are in the link which is going to be posted at the end of this blog again). One of the brothers brought his people into the caves for shelter. The site wasn't too far into the caves but remember, they are still mapping all of the caves in the mountain. There was a stalacite hanging from the roof and because of how sound travels, the look outs would bang on this hollow stalacite and the alarm would be carried throughout the system.

Our guide used a rubber mallet to bang on the stalactite and we could hear the noise it made. I don't want to use the word echo here, because it wasn't an echo, just the pure sound of the banging. It's difficult to explain, but for the record, back in the 70's an amphitheater was built a little farther into the caves and a world renowned tenor from Italy came to test it. He said that the sound quality in the caves was as good as or better than any he had performed in. Now, if this was an echo I think that it would begin to sound garbled within seconds...

At this camp site, which was probably a forward look out as I think about it, there was a fire ring set up. They used the branches from a nearby tree and pounded them until the pulp had been mashed into a torch. The torches were used to light the caves. Now, keep in mind here that although man had mastered fire at this point, it was best if the camp fires kept burning. They could produce fire (oh and not with matches at the time) by twirling a stick inside of a hollowed out rock, with kindling at the bottom. This was a great method (and one I believe the Boy Scouts teach this technique to this day) but the problem was that it could take hours for the friction to produce a small fire inside of the rock. There was also a rock and stone "rolling pin" to grind corn into meal which then could be cooked for dinner along with whatever the hunters found for dinner.

At this point in the cave, there was still some light coming from the entrance so it wasn't too bad. As we moved from that area into the next area, our guide flicked on the lights for the new area and switched off the light from the previous area. Cara and I could clearly hear the sounds made by the switch just as clearly as if we had been standing right next to him!

So now there is only the lighting that came from those lights, they were bright but I could no longer see any light coming from the entrance. It was kind of eerie to stand there. It's not like I lost my orientation, but then, I wasn't eager to go far from the illumination either.

The next couple of stops we made along the way were fascinating rock formations. I believe that I did get a few photos of some of them. They were amazing. More colorful that I had imagined even though I had looked at the link below. Now, as we moved farther into the caves, the roof as it was, got taller and taller. The light no longer penetrated the darkness as it had earlier. I was hesitant about looking straight up because I got a little dizzy. My feeling of orientation was getting even shakier. Remember, as we moved into these different areas, our guide for the day, was flicking lights on and off. They were concealed very well so he would be out of our sight and we could only see the flashlight that he carried.

It's getting a little spooky in there at this point when the guide decided it would be fun activity to turn OFF the lights so we could see how dark it was in there! At this point, I barely knew where up was, although I knew I was standing on my feet! There was no sounds anywhere in the caves at this point and it was probably the most dark and senorsy deprivation place I've ever been IN MY LIFE! But at least there were no bats flying around.

Did I say bats? Yeah, there were a few hundred roosting in the caves and when our guide, who some may feel has a sense of humor, but I would not agree, decided it would be a fun thing to flash his light into the crowd and wake a few of them up! They were smallish (catch the "ish" part) fruit bats that were were not into biting you on the neck... and only a few few and a few more fluttered their wings.

The amphitheater I mentioned early was amazing. There were stone benches for the opera lovers to sit on while the stage had been built a little higher than the seats but not so high as you couldn't watch the performance. Our guide gave us a short but lovely, demonstration of sound within the amphitheater area as well. It's amazing how the voice resonated but didn't echo. Also, interestingly enough Cara and I did notice that as we moved farther into the caves, the temperature didn't change but the humidity did rise.

There was one more area that we were given the opportunity to see. You had to hunch over and almost on hands and knees crawl into another cavern. Cara took him up on it (being so young and all) but I choose to wait kind of patiently for them to return. Cara whispered that I hadn't missed much but a little back strain because it was very similar to what we had already seen. I would have been disappointed I didn't go if she said there was a diamond mine on the other side of that crawl space!

We had seen and been educated on the caves and it was time to be guided out of the caves (with lights going off and on again as we went along) but our gait was a bit faster on the way out. Then it was time to crawl back down the steps to the car and move along on our adventure for the day.