As I always say Nature is a mystery. It beautiful though, we can never imagine that how much mysteries did it has kept inside it. There are forests, rivers, mountains which are the most beautiful gift of god along with nature.
On mountains, we have seen many caves, some are dangerous which are difficult to explore, but many caves have been explored. The largest cave that explored is the Hang Son Doong.
Hang Son Doong is considered to be the largest cave in the world, based on volume and also the biggest cave in Vietnam, found by Ho Khanh – a Phong Nha jungle man in 1990. In 2009, Hang Son Doong was officially surveyed and measured by the The British -Vietnam Cave Expedition Team led by Howard Limbert.
The Expedition team then announced it as the world’s largest natural cave with a volume of 38.5 million m3.
This team along with National Geographic magazine had announced Son Doong Cave as the largest natural limestone cave on the planet in the same year. In 2013, the Guinness World Records Organisation recorded it as the world’s largest natural cave.
Ho Khanh and the expert team discussed and decided to call the cave Son Doong, a combination of 2 words Son means mountain, Doong is the name of the valley.
The Son Doong Cave has a total length of nearly 9 km long and the volume is up to 38.5 million cubic metres, which makes this cave the largest natural cave on the planet. With this volume, Hang Son Doong is 5 times larger than Deer cave in Malaysia, which was said to be the largest natural cave ( before Hang Son Doong was discovered).
It has many complex and giant stalactites, primaeval rain forests growing inside the cave, its own ecosystem, weather or a mysterious underground river that no explorer has yet discovered to the end of it. Many visitors admitted that the Hang Son Doong Cave is like another world.
This amazing cave also houses an impressive ecosystem, inside the largest cave passage in the world. This huge and intricate cave system was created by the underground river, and filled with formations from the water that percolated down from a rainforest above.
The journey to find Son Doong in Vietnam- the largest natural cave in the world started in 1994. On April 07, 2009, Howard Limbert led a caving expert team in collaboration with the Geography Department of Hanoi University of Science to survey the cave. The first person stepping inside Son Doong was Peter MacNab, a member of The British Vietnam Cave Expedition Team.
Son Doong was first discovered by a local man, Ho Khanh, in 1990. Taking shelter from a storm at the base of a huge cliff in the heart of the jungle, he found a deep hole at the base of the rock that was emitting wind and even puffs of cloud. He didn’t explore further, and its location was forgotten for 19 years until he rediscovered the entrance and led Limbert and his team of divers to it.