By Imo

In January, myself, Madphil (BEC), Fleur Loveridge(OUCC) and Pete Talling(UBSS) went on a recce to Myanmar (Burma) to look for caves. The whole opportunity came about as a result of Joerg Dryebolt’s lecture at Hidden Earth.  I was inspired, and he helped to put me in touch with the ‘right people in Myanmar.

We had an excellent guide called Yan and a great driver called Dan.

We made some good contacts in the Hopon area and found some river passages. There  is limestone there! Nothing ongoing at this stage, except for the temple cave itself at Htam Sam, which we hope to have full permission to explore fully next year. The head monk, was not happy for us to go beyond the ’sacred lake’ this year.

Having our guide Yan was an absolute must for us! There are some very nice formations in the passages out there, some of the best i’ve seen any where really. Especially in the temple cave at HtamSam.

We found several entrances and at least 2km of new passage, nothing ongoing at this stage

It was great to find there was limestone. Pete and Fleur were especially excited by this, given they have had a run of bad luck in recent expeditions.

The most striking thing about this area to my mind is how well decorated a lot of the caves are there.

Many of these large and decorated caves have been converted into temple caves by the monks you could say  they are Sites of Special Spiritual Importance (SSSI).

MadPhil worked hard and produced a great survey of Htam Sam which the head monk was very happy to recieve.

This is only a  quick report just to let you know what happened in brief. I will give a more in depth talk about it soon, and you’ll get the opportunity to see more photos then.