Photo Peacefulday on Wikimedia Commons
In the year 1991, a man named Hồ Khanh discovered a cavity in the Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng park on the coast of Vietnam, about 500 kilometers south of the capital Hanoi. As he later recounted, he felt a gust of wind and heard the running of a river inside. The whole park contains numerous caves (more than 150). Because of this, and because the entrance was very hidden by the vegetation, Khanh was not able to find it again for the second time.
He spent years trying to rediscover it until he managed to guide a group of cavers from the British Cave Research Association to it in 2009, who explored the Son Doong cave for four days, between April 10th and 14th.
What they found was the largest natural cave in the world, with a passage of 38.4 million cubic meters in volume, formed between 2 and 5 million years ago.
Photo Doug Knuth on Wikimedia Commons
The passage is 5 kilometers long and an astounding 200 meters high (for comparison, the Torre de Cristal in Madrid, the tallest building in Spain, is 249 meters and has 50 floors).
In total, the cave reaches a depth of 9 kilometers, is crossed by a stream, and due to the collapse of the ceiling in two large areas or sinkholes, allowing light to enter, a dense forest grows inside.
Due to its gigantic proportions, which would allow for the construction of a city inside with skyscrapers of 40 floors, it also houses the largest stalagmites in the world. Some reach up to 70 meters in height.
The cave was thoroughly mapped and photographed by National Geographic in 2010, which allowed for a virtual online tour on the Son Doong 360 website.
In April 2019, a team of British divers, the same ones who participated in the rescue of the Thai soccer team in 2018, discovered that the cave is connected through a tunnel (which would reach 120 meters in depth) that runs underwater with another large cavern, Hang Thung, adding another 1.6 million cubic meters of volume.
Tourist access to the cave is quite restricted, with only a thousand permits per season (and prices that hover around 2,000 euros per visit). But the feeling of visiting a lost and, in a way, cinematic world is what most people report who have been able to afford the luxury of entering. In fact, it seems that the main theme of Indiana Jones movies is quite recurrent among expeditions during the journey.
In addition, during the rainy season it is usually inaccessible. Therefore, the government of Vietnam is considering building a cable car that runs through the entire cave, which is opposed by environmental associations.
Sources: Son Doong 360 (National Geographic) CNN / DailyMail / Vietnam.com / Son Doong Cave (web oficial) / Wikipedia
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