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# Two thousand caves and a torch each: Meghalaya's young guides learn the way by heart
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/meghalaya-cave-guardians/
- Published: 2026-11-14T07:16:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-14T07:21:48.000Z
- Description: In India's north east, a limestone plateau holds an estimated 2,000 caves, and about 100 local young people have trained to guide visitors through them. At Mawmluh Cave there are no electric lights, just torches and guides who know every turn.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Conservation, Global Good News, People, All stories

On a limestone plateau in Meghalaya, in India's north east, an estimated 2,000 caves wind beneath the hills, and a new generation of local guides is learning them by heart. At Mawmluh Cave near Cherrapunji, also called Sohra, 7.2 kilometres of passages are kept as nature made them: no electric lights, visitors carry their own torches, and only 25 people may go in each day. Guides train for two years and find their way without maps. "If we install lights, it becomes a showroom," says guide Milton Marak, 27, who first went in at 18 with a borrowed torch. "Today, hundreds of people come every year to experience the cave." Mawmluh also holds a page of the planet's story: in 2018 the International Union of Geological Sciences ratified the Meghalayan Age, the latest chapter of Earth's history, which began about 4,200 years ago and is marked in one of its stalagmites.

[Read the full story: Communities experiment with new ways to protect old caves, by Jyoti Thakur and Pratik Chakraborty, Mongabay India.](https://india.mongabay.com/2026/11/communities-experiment-with-new-ways-to-protect-old-caves/)

![Waterfalls pouring off green cliffs of the Khasi Hills with cloud over the forest](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/11/waterfalls-pouring-off-green-cliffs-of-the-khasi-hills-with-cloud-over.jpg)

Seven Sisters Falls on the Khasi Hills plateau near Sohra. Photograph: Unsplash.

Much of this began with Brian D. Kharpran Daly, regarded as India's first speleologist, who founded the Meghalaya Adventurers Association in 1990 and, with his teams, has documented more than 1,700 of the state's caves. Over three decades the association has trained about 100 local young people as certified cave guides. Deep inside live pale freshwater shrimp, white crabs and cave crickets, and in caves of the Jaintia Hills swims Neolissochilus pnar, found in 2019 and named for the Pnar people, the largest cave fish known anywhere. Quenty Mary Jallong, 24, has just finished nature guide training with the association and hopes to work with her village council to open her village's cave as a community run site. "I wanted to learn what lies inside," she says.

### Sources and links

An Earth to Sea News story, built mainly on Mongabay India (10 November 2026), with the cave science from the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Photographs: as credited in captions.

- [Mongabay India, Communities experiment with new ways to protect old caves](https://india.mongabay.com/2026/11/communities-experiment-with-new-ways-to-protect-old-caves/)
- [IUGS Geological Heritage, GSSP of the Meghalayan Stage in the Mawmluh Cave](https://iugs-geoheritage.org/geoheritage%5Fsites/gssp-of-the-meghalayan-stage-in-the-mawmluh-cave/)
- [International Commission on Stratigraphy, Meghalayan GSSP](https://stratigraphy.org/gssps/files/meghalayan.pdf)
- [Vertebrate Zoology, Neolissochilus pnar species description (Dahanukar and colleagues, 2023)](https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.73.e101011)