The Caves of Meghalaya

Meghalaya is the cave capital of India and most visitors never go below ground. The plateau is limestone and sandstone under the heaviest rainfall on earth, which is the perfect recipe for caves - well over a thousand have been located and surveyed here, and cavers are still finding more every season.

Mawsmai near Sohra is the easy one: lit, floored, and a genuine sideways squeeze in two places. Arwah is the better visit - a walk in through a forested gorge, far fewer people, and marine fossils visible in the rock above your head, which is a strange thing to stand under at 1,400 metres.

Then the two that make this a real destination rather than a photo stop. Krem Puri, near Laitsohum in the Mawsynram area, was surveyed in 2016 and runs to roughly 24 km of passages - the longest sandstone cave in the world. And Krem Mawmluh, just outside Sohra, gave science the stalagmite that defines the Meghalayan Age: the geological age we are currently living in, covering the last 4,200 years, is named after this place.

What's in it

• 01Krem Puri - the world's longest sandstone cave, ~24 km
• 02Krem Mawmluh - the cave that named the Meghalayan Age
• 03Mawsmai for the easy walk-through, Arwah for the fossils
• 04Cool and dry even in monsoon, when the viewpoints are closed in