Expedition Name (& Club): Nagaland Caving Expedition

Destination country: India
Region: Nagaland - North East India

Lat: 25.7381 Long: 94.8972 Elevation: 1400 m
MEF funding: Applying for MEF funding

Leader: Mr. Dan Harries

Brief Expedition objectives:

List a short summary of the main Expedition objectives.

1.Explore, survey and document the caves of Nagaland, a yet speleologically unexplored state of North East India. This first Expedition will focus on the area of Mimi, an outpost near the Myanmar border. A recce in March 2021 yielded 6 caves and a lot more potential is expected.
2. During expeditions in Meghalaya, 2019 and 2020, a team of European cavers trained a group of 8 young Maghlayan cavers in every aspect of caving techniques and speleology. Supported by the same team of tutors the Nagaland Expedition will be their first full expedition from which they wil gain more experience to finally be able to perform caving excursions and research campaigns on their own.

How can the GPF support your Expedition?:

Please explain the aspects of the trip which make it eligible for Ghar Parau funding.

The objectives of the expedition fully match the goals and focus of GPF: 1.The area of research is completely unexplored and the team of experts/tutors (see objectives) consists to a good part of UK cavers (plus some Europeans), covering the fields of: Topography, Geology, Biology, caving techniques and cave rescue.
The experts are between 30 and 65 years old, the Meghalaya Cavers between 25 and 40. This is a good mix to make the project sustainable and lasting several years (again, see objectives)
3. benefit will mainly the young Meghalyan Cavers, who are mostly students. The expedition fee of £350.- per head may seem low for us europeans - but for them it is not affordable. Therefore the team of Tutors has privately financed the equipment of the Meghalayans (full kit plus expedition gear), and has sponsored part of their expedition fees in the past (mainly in 2020). For the 2022 we are again looking at considerable expedition costs and are therefore seeking support from the GPF.

Detailed description of objectives:

Give a more detailed account of the purpose of the trip, including any particular known caves you intend to visit, specific areas where you will explore for new cave, and scientific experiments you will attempt.

1. Recce: The 4-day recce in March 2021 led to the discovery of 6 Caves, 4 of which are vertical and 2 are horizontal. From information gathered by the local guides we can expect several more. The expedition team will therefore further explore the limestone and sandstone zones of the area to inventorize potential objects.
The difference in altitude between hilltops and valley bottoms is ca.800m. From borehole data by the Geological Survey of India we know that the limestone is in several layers (separated by quartzite) which are about 100m thick and steeply dipping at 60°+.
2. All caves will be topographically surveyed and the data will be processed to produce cave maps. Descriptions and Photos will be added to the documentations which will be completed by reports about cave fauna, geology and cave genesis.
3. Additionally, a long term bat monitoring scheme will be set up to be left with the village. The area is known for large bat roosts and huge colonies of migrating bats. So far (to our knowledge) no research about the bats, their habitat and their migration paths has been done, we will be able to collect scientifically relevant information.
4. We will continue the training of the Meghalayan team members "on the job" and integrate them in all tasks of the expedition. From previous tutorials they have a good base of knowledge and their caving skills are on a good level including SRT and rigging. We will further train them to become self-efficient expedition cavers.
5. During the expedition we also mean to take out a day or two to conduct some basic training for the villagers so as to peak their interest in the subject of cave exploration and to enable safer trips when the villagers take tourists in.

Previous work in this area:

Give details of any previous work in this area by your own and other teams. Include references to reports and articles published on the area, and the names of any local cavers or academics with whom you have discussed the Expedition.

1) Regarding documented cave exploration, no work has been done in this area.
2) One related publication is available: Geological Report on Detailed Exploration for Limestone in Mimi-Pyakatsu Block, District Kiphire - Nagaland / by B.A.Bhavan, Nagpur 2014.
3. As a reference to the work, finds an publications we have done in Meghalaya for the past 30 years we refer to:
Arbenz, Thomas (2012 - 2021) (ed) Cave Pearls of Meghalaya Vol 1/2/3, Matzendorf , ISBN 978-3-033-06281-8 / 04761-7 / 03637-6