LABIT, Sutnga - Monpat (Krem)

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

A pair of south-east facing cave entrances (one 5 m wide and 2.5 m high, the other 5 m wide and 1.5 m high) give access to a stream cave, which appears to have formed by the washing out of sandstone (note 1) but contains apparently iron stained secondary calcite formations (stalagmite speleothems) and is partly modified by the mining of an about 25 cm thick coal seam (Brooks, S J 2000.02.29 Mss with cave plan 1: 500). SITUATION: Unknown. At an unspecified location somewhere in the vicinity of the village of Monpat (Brooks, S J 2000.02.29 Mss), Mupat or Mupud (note 2). APPROACH: From the village of Mupud, follow one of the local Shaktiman tracks (rough fair weather roads) and paths for an unspecified distance in an east-northeasterly direction across several small hillocks to reach a relatively small valley or ravine (with unknown dimensions and unrecognised orientation) that had been wooded on 29th February 2000 CE (common era). The two cave entrances lie in the base of the ravine, moe or less where it is crossed by one of the footpaths in this area. CAVE DESCRIPTION: Two cave entrances, of which one is an estimated 5 m wide and 2.5 m high and the other also an estimated 5 m wide but about 1.5 m high, are situated in an unidentified spatial relation to each other side by side the foot of an estimated 8 m high sandstone cliff. An unspecified main cave entrance, which had been for a very short time on 29th February 2000 on a self-centred person's left, gives access to a cave chamber (in one way or another 15 m by 8 m wide and 2 m high) from which the cave passage called Small Crawl (1 m wide, 0.4 m high) leads to the Other Cave Chamber (in one way or another 10 m by 6 m wide and 1.5 m high). A relatively Low Crawl in a so-called the far side of the Other Cave Chamber leads not only to an area modified by coal miners but also continues east to intersect a relatively small and and comparatively low (2 m wide, 0.8 m high) seasonal -Dry Streamway- which features apparntly iron-stained stalagmites on the floor and leads either upstream or downstrean to the second entrance. PROSPECTS: Poor, unless you are a miner digging the thin 25 cm coal seam in the cave. CULTURAL HISTORY - human use coal-mining: The presence of coal, pit props and areas of stacked deads (miners' spoil) give evidence of mining activities throughout the cave, e.g. the mining of a small coal seam in the sandstone bed immediately beneath the cave. CAVE LIFE: A few bats (Chiroptera), -snot gobblers- (larval stage of fungus gnats, Diptera: Mycetophilidae) hanging from the cave ceiling, red-coloured and sponge-like fungus on the cave ceiling, and so-called white (perhaps white coloured, possibly pale or unpigmented) woodlice (Isopoda). An unidentified local (no name mentioned) from Sutnga told Brian D. Kharpran Daly that once there lived snakes in the cave and ate bats as they flew past. No evidence of this was found in the cave. Also unanswered remains the question if it were the eaen bats or the living snakes which flew past.en bats or the living snakes which flew past.