It’s been a while since my last caving trip. As an adrenaline seeker, caving could be more adventurous than climbing and mountaineering. When you have to make a decision for the right place of the main and back-up anchor, is it accessable for your team safely especially for the weakest ones, enjoying the feeling when you put your safety equips on the rope and try to go descent, explore the darkness and the unknown. Witnessing wonderful ornaments- stalagtite, stalagmite, pillar, gordyn, many more. Looking forward for the next that will come. What will appear after this tunnel? The light from your headlamp will be your guidance. 

Hhhhh, this intro sucks, I’m not a poet and I’m not gonna make you feel annoyed, but caving is already become a part of my life and like a curry soup, the more it is cooked, the more delicious it will be. The more often you go caving, you will realize, learn and experience more. 

Last weekend, me and several friends from SWR went caving to Klapanunggal area. Specifically to Ligarmukti Village. This is the first time we go there, due to our favorite area (Tajur) is already under control of a local community that requires every visitor to submit some permission letters to them, to local police and to Kepala RT (I give up with this translation😂). Anddd all of those letters must be submitted 3 days before the due date. Hoo!! I think this is the new rules that actually good enough to manage and control the visitors, but we are not in the programme or expedition, we just wanna stroll around and it’s quite complicated for us. So we go to Klapanunggal based on the recommendation from Linggih. There is Mang Hasan that can accompany us to go caving. It took about 4 hours to get there via Cileungsi. From Klapanunggal to Ligarmukti Village, the street sometimes is very bad, many holes and rocks that make it difficult to get through. I just cant imagine how it will be in rainy days. 

In the middle of nowhere, we were doubt of the direction that we had to take. I asked a akang at warung about the direction to Ligarmukti Village and he said he wanted to go there too because he lived there. Yeah! 

At Sodong, there was a portal and an signage of Ligarmukti Water Park. What?! What kind of waterpark hereee. We have to pay 10.000 rupiahs for each motorcycle. We asked them where is the house of Mang Hasan but none of them knew. I tried to call my friend about the full name of Mang Hasan because many people had the same name but the connection was very poor. We were so lucky that there was a woman that is Mang Hasan’s sister. She told us the direction that was not far from here. 

Mang Hasan has a small warung in front of his house but he wasn’t at home. Because we waited for quite long, a man asked us to go to the cave by ourselves. But we didnt know the location of the cave, so that’s why we need Mang Hasan to accompany us. 

At the end, we asked Mang Nana (Pak RT) to accompany us to horinzontal caves. There was Landak Cave. We all used coverall, helmet and boots, but Mang Nana only go descent with his daily clothes. It was his hundreds time go there. He knows every single thing in that cave. 

Landak Cave is a horizontal cave that isn’t long, it’s only about 40-50 metres long and has a chamber in it. With no river, but sometimes we have to climb and crawl through its tunnel. This one has a few of ornaments. But those are not really beautiful, most of them already died. 

We witnessed that these ornamnents here were exploited too much in 1980s (from Mang Nana). For 20cm of stalagtite were priced 15.000 rupiahs on that era. People competed to collect as much stalagtite as they could. Outrageous. So here we see now, a big hole of darkness with pieces of stalagtite on the ground. Even though the stalagtite are still living now, but it takes very long. 

Not only the destroyed stalagtites that we met, but also there were many graffitis on the stones🤔😣😣.

I hate to share this, but I think i have to do it so you can know about the condition of the caves here. 

Mang Nana is very active and energetic, he caught a swallow.

We and Mang Nana. Left to right:

Bima, Aji, Mang Nana, Me, Bernard and Leo.

Let’s move to the second, Tawanan Cave. Mang Hasan gathered with us here. It is located on the hill and based on the history , it was used to be a prison. We had to hike for about 20 minutes from Landak Cave and the weather was quite hot with no big trees surround us🔥🔥.

Tawanan Cave is not long, just like the previous, but it has less stones than Landak Cave. 10 metres from the entrance we could see a chamber with a ventilation. It is a perfect place to have a lunch. 

Just go straight for about 7 metres, take right and go straight again for 15 metres and you will arrive at the bottom. So small righttt! I called it gua-guaan😂. At the bottom, we saw that the ornaments here were ever been exploited too much. This one is the most eye-catching:

Can you imagine, it was a very beautiful gordyn with his blinking particle on it? 

But it isnt anymore! People cut it with a saw and it look like a chibi maruko-chan’s hair. 

What comes in your mind when you see these?

We did cave mapping in Tawanan Cave, just the demo because some of us haven’t know about cave mapping. I train them for a while and we did it with our own smartphone. 

Bernard as the ilustrator and he did his job very well, I asked him to sketch the tunnel of the cave in 3 versions: Plan Section, Extended Section and Cross Section. So simple actually, just sketch the shape of the thunnel. But, he draw every single thing of the cave like this:

This is what will happen if you go caving with a DKV student😂

Go back to Mang Hasan’s house again, his wife already prepared meal for us. So kinddddd. 

Mang Hasan, Mang Nana and their families are very warm-hearted. Couldn’t as for more. Thanks for accompany us caving this time~