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There is a distinctive emptiness, an unsettling silence truly devoid of even a whisper of a sound. The tightness experienced in breathing imposes on one physically, as well as mentally, especially when commingled with the unfamiliar odors. It is everything that your average above-the-ground-dwelling-person would probably never encounter. It is probably the only place on earth where one is confronted with a sense of timelessness, where there is neither night nor day - only darkness. What brave soul, might one ask, would venture into such an abyss, and for what purpose? |
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Speleology is the study and exploration of caves, their contents and related phenomena. Speleologists are those cave explorers who, during their adventures underground, will gather a variety of detailed information on the cave, as well as cave artifacts and the like. In addition, speleologists endeavor to draw maps of the caves themselves and study everything from the geological structure of the cave, to how the cave physically changes, to hydrological aspects of cave formation, to the nature of the cave's ecosystem. Thus, besides its obvious attraction as a tourist destination for outdoor trekkers, caves also hold high archeological, geological and paleontological value.
Cave exploration draws in people from a multitude of professions - medical doctors and businessmen equally enjoy and are fascinated by caves and its peculiar set of rules... In a normal outdoor ecosystem, the food chain starts from the photosynthesis of plants, made possible by sunlight. Inside the cave where even artificial light is a luxury, the food chain begins with the excrement of bats and the remains of animals trapped inside and digested by bacteria! It is the efforts of these daring speleologists that "unearth" such unusually useful tidbits. In the least, they improve upon our understanding of natural phenomena both in the past and in the present. At best, they continue to open up this new frontier for others, a frontier that in the past was seldom explored. |
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