KEERIMALAI SNAKE CAVE

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

No locally known name has been identified for a NNW facing cave entrance (about 1.5 m high and a metre wide) leading to some 19.5 m of not only surveyed but actually mapped rift cave passages. ETYMOLOGY: The Slovene caver Pavol MITTER (1979a: 156-157) reported the amazing case of a cave with a Slovene cave name in a Tamil speaking country: Hadia jaskyna pri Kirimalai (MITTER 1979a: 156-157) or Hadiu jaskynu pri Kerimalai / Snake Cave by Kirimalai (MITTER 1978: 147). SITUATION: At an unspecified location somewhere in the vicinity of the village of Keerimalai (N09°49': E080°00') on the Jaffna Peninsula. CAVE DESCRIPTION (note 1): The so-called Snake Cave consists of an about 12 m long horizontal cave developed along two faults along 190/65 and 184/85 (without unit but probably rather degree than grade). The entrance, about 1.5 m high and a metre wide, leads to a chamber from where two branches continue The south-eastern one ends some 7.5 m from the entrance in a wall, and the southen one runs some 12 m from the entrance into an impenetrable fissure. The more or less horizontal floor, mostly covered with sand and soil with a few fallen rocks and one larger boulder, is partly covered with a shallow pool in the distal end of the southern branch.n one runs some 12 m from the entrance into an impenetrable fissure. The more or less horizontal floor, mostly covered with sand and soil with a few fallen rocks and one larger boulder, is partly covered with a shallow pool in the distal end of the southern branch.