DEER CAVE & LANG CAVE – Mulu NP, Sarawak, East Malaysia – 30 September 2024
As part of the ISC (International Show Cave) conference, we were treated to four hours walking through these two show caves and then returning to the viewing platform to watch the bat exodus as they leave the cave to hut for food. Deer Cave is the world’s largest cave passage, or it was until up to a few years ago. A very civilised trip.
Deer Cave was the first cave that was explored in the area on a Royal Geographical Society expedition. The RGS invited Andy Eavis (one of the speakers at the conference) to participate in the expedition. He’d just been on an expedition to Papua New Guinea in 1975 and he (along with 5 of his colleagues) joined multi disciplinary rain forest expedition to the uninhabited region of Mulu.
The entrance to Deer cave is underwhelming – apparently They had some aerial photos taken by the military and they could see a big black hole
This is the entrance itself – again underwhelming.
I can’t imagine the excitement as they approached this massive cave and how in awe they must have been to see the size of it. Photos just can’t do it justice.
But once inside is unbelievable.
Inside the cave, on the left hand side of the photo, in the middle are people – the cave is huge! There are millions of bats roosting in the cave 100m above you. There are also thousands of swiftlets swooping in the darkness.
This is a photo from the entrance looking to a daylight hole, in the middle of the photo on the left is more of the boardwalk – and the daylight hole has to be around 100m away.
Part of the boardwalk.
Looking to the daylight hole and what they call Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden is a doline that has collapsed. There is a stream running through it, and whilst once you could walk through to the Garden of Eden, there was a flash flood a few years ago that killed a tourist and a guide and you haven’t been able to walk through the Garden of Eden since.
Looking back over the Boardwalk from the Garden of Eden viewing platform.
On the way out back to the entrance, and this photo shows water falling from the ceiling – possibly from a “shower head formation” where water falls through the formation just like a shower head.
Once we’d exited Deer Cave, we walked down the boardwalk to an intersection, it was a short 30m walk to Lang Cave, discovered in 1977 by a local Berawan man named Lang Belarek, whilst those in the expedition he was on were exploring Deer Cave. Apparently, Lang walked along the base of the cliff-line and discovered the entrance to this cave. It has a meandering 240m walkway and I have to say that of all the caves I’d seen so far Lang was probably the best decorated of them. It too is a show cave and the route takes you past masses of stalagmites, stalactites and fragile rim stone pools.
How good is this decoration?
A close up of what a shower head formation does – pours water down onto the formation.
The boardwalk through the cave, it’s quite extensive, but not a large chamber.
Beautiful formation.
The formations were just one after another.
And still more.
This one was huge.
And still more.
As I said, has to be one of the best decorated caves I’ve seen here at Mulu.
A map of the cave, not very extensive, but WOW very impressive.
Once we’d seen enough of Lang cave we walked down to the viewing platform for the exodus of the bats. There were many more people once the bats started exiting.
The display went on for about 15 – 30 minutes with wave after wave of bats exiting – you can just see a wave here (camera doesn’t do it justice). This happens pretty much every night – although when it’s raining the display isn’t as good.
It was then a 3.5k walk back to our accommodation and the cafe for dinner. Have to say this was one of the highlights of our stay here at Mulu – would definitely recommend visiting the show caves here.