Sunday, October 23, 2011

tham kong lo

Drip, splash; drip, splash. The makings for an otherworldly vacuum of reality are thus. Bulbous, calcified spears of gravity-minding and gravity-defying minerals reach towards their opposite. The methodical persistance of nature overtakes me. Such simple processes, ad infinitum, sum to a fine work of art, a mind-boggling complex organism, or, in this case, vacuous caverns of delicate water-sculpted trim.


In a single tree dugout canoe we skim across the invisible river water. From the errant headlamp shine of our guides, I can barely make out the wall edges and forms surrounding me. Beauty is present, I know, with or without direct visual confirmation.
At times football field dimensioned, at others road width, the cool empty spaces race over me. I half expect to see stars peeking out above me - but not, we are in the 7km long Tham Kong Lo cave in central Laos, Khammouan province. An hour of submersion in what must feel as close to a vaccum as one could get.


Our vessel births us into wide eyed jungle framed by those porous crass crags of limestone. A short walk to a 30 person village reveals life in this new reality. Men, woman, children hard at work among the stalks of rice that will feed them in days to come. Eyes of curious children poke out from above the side-walls of raised bamboo houses. Domesticated animals, covered in mud, balk at our relative sterility.

Back from the cave, we stay with an older Lao couple and sit around near concrete mixers with the younger generation.





1 comment:

  1. Good morning how are you?

    My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

    I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

    For all this I would ask you one small favour:
    Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Laos? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Laos in order to complete my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and a original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

    Emilio Fernandez Esteban
    Calle Valencia, 39
    28903 Getafe (Madrid)
    Spain

    If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com, where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

    Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

    Yours Sincerely

    ReplyDelete