SKY RIFT
30.758300,77.779200
Description
NOTE 1: »Adawa« (Glennie 1946.08.01 Mss; Leakey 1946 June: Bodhyar Pothole Map; LEAKEY 1955: 58) is the village indicated as »Udawan« near N30°45'10”: E77°46'10” (Everest 1830): 2093 m asl on the Survey of India, Four Inch to One Mile (1: 15,840) Forest Map Series sheet 53-F/13 S2 (ca. 1940). NOTE 2: Trush (Aves: Muscicapidae: Turdinae: Turdus gen.) a small or medium-sized songbird, typically having a brown back, spotted breast, and loud song. The thrush subfamily (Turdinae) includes the chats, robins, bluebirds, blackbirds, nightingales, redstarts, and wheatears.
One of the worldwide very rare cases of a truly bottomless pothole or»through shaft« (Glennie 1946.08.01 Mss) consists of a vertical tunnel characterised by a pair of cave entrances, which lie opposite across each other and are connected by one solitary, perpendicular cave passage. ETYMOLOGY: »So called because on a misty day the sky can be seen through a dangerous looking hole in the ground« (Glennie 1946.08.01 Mss). SITUATION: At a misty, if not nebulous location somewhere »in the Adawa vicinity« (note 1) and approximately »… between one and two miles« (about 2 km or 3 km west-south-west) from the Budher Forest Rest House, and at a spot where there is »a ridge of precipices that curves around a spur in the fork of two streams, which join at their foot and flow into the Tons« river. CAVE DESCRIPTION 1946: The vertical tunnel cave called Sky Rift ». … consists of a large pothole in the precipice with one end exposed. The depth of the floor from the hole is 160 ft [49 m] or five ladders and might have passages leading off. Home of very large bats An attempt was made to reach it from below, but the 'going' was difficult due to undergrowth and steepness & was stopped by a piece of loose precipice« (Glennie 1946.08.01 Mss). CAVE DESCRIPTION 1951: »… scoring the forest covered precipices between the two streams one misty day, we found ourselves looking down a hole in the ground at the base of a cliff onto a sun-lit sky. Below! We were not intoxicated. Unknown to us at that time, we were on the brink of a tree-hidden precipice overhanging a deep cloud filled valley, and the hole we had found opened into a vast cavernous cache in the rock face down which we gazed onto a lake of level vapour« (LEAKEY 1955: 59). CAVE LIFE: Glennie (1946.08.01 Mss) noticed »very large bats« (Chiroptera: pos. Megachiroptera?) and LEAKEY (1955: 59) »a colony of thrush-sized bats« (note 2).
Caves nearby
| Distance (km) | Name | Length (m) | Depth (m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | Royal Artillery Sink | ||
| 0.7 | BLASTED HOLE | ||
| 0.7 | KANDWA POT 2 | ||
| 0.7 | KANDWA POT 6 | ||
| 0.7 | KANDWA POT | ||
| 0.7 | KANDWA POT 3 | ||
| 0.8 | KANDWA POT 5 | ||
| 0.8 | KANDWA POT 4 | ||
| 1.1 | BUDHER MUD POT |