Summary
Siju Dobakkol (Siju Cave), is also known as Bat Cave in English, it is by far the most well-known cave in India. It is located in the North East Indian state of Meghalaya near the Napak Lake and Simsang River game reserve. It is a limestone cave and is famous for its stalagmites and stalactites. Siju Dobakkol is the home of tens of thousands of bats. It is bio- speleologically the best researched cave in the Indian subcontinent, having been investigated by the unrivalled interdisciplinary research project undertaken as early as 1922 by Stanley Kemp and K Chopra of the Indian Museum, Kolkata. [1]
The Siju cave-system is more than 4 kilometres long, but nearly all of it is filled with water and inaccessible. The limestone hills of Meghalaya receive a lot of rain and moisture and holds many other cave-systems, some of them much longer and larger than Siju, but Siju Cave is among the most thoroughly researched and explored systems.
In 1927, it was found that the Siju caves have a constant temperature of 21–26.4 °C. Until 1981 it was India's longest cave at 1200m. Today with 4,772m of surveyed length it is currently India's 14th longest. [2]
Biodiversity and faunistic composition edit
See also edit
Literature edit
- Stanley Kemp (1924). Rhynchota of the Siju Cave, Garo Hills, Meghalaya (PDF).
References edit
- ^ The Indian Encyclopaedia, Volume 1. Genesis Publishing Pvt Ltd. p. 6573. ISBN 9788177552577.
- ^ Biospeleology: The Biology of Cavernicolous animals. Elsevier. 11 September 2013. p. 309. ISBN 9781483185132.
- ^ Encyclopedia of Caves. Academic Press. 2012. p. 245. ISBN 9780123838322.
- ^ "Meghalaya: Visit Asia's cleanest village & meet the flurry red panda". The Economic Times.
External links edit
- Meghalaya Tourism: Siju Cave