April 19th, 2024.
It’s cave day today. Kong Lor cave. All I know about it is that it’s a cave you can cross with a boat.
I get there way too early. It’s 8 am, technically opening time, but this is Laos, people tend to be more relaxed about punctuality. At 8:30, the ticket office opens and I’m in. I park my bike close to the cave entrance, but the staff is still getting ready for visitors. A man in a both is calling names through some speakers. Sounds like a calling sheet. Every time he calls a name, someone around yells something back. “Maaa”, “Oooooh”, “Maaaa!”, they reply to the calls.
I’m the first visitor here. I bought a shared boat to cross the cave, so I have to wait for other visitors. The morning today fells fresh. There was a storm last night, lasted until 7am. It’s the first time it rains for me since Laos new year, and it’s probably a signal of the approaching wet season.
A visitor drives in his motorcycle. It’s Hendrik from Germany, he also bought a shared boat ticket. We meet and visit the booth to figure out how many people we need to start the trip. “Two, three people is ok” says the man in the booth. He calls our drive on the speaker and off we go to the cave, Hendrik, the driver and me.
We are the only two visitors in the cave, no one else started this early today. The driver gives us a life jacket and a headlamp. Most of the cave is completely dark, expect for a few artificially lit areas. We get on the boat, the driver starts the boat engine, and we move towards the darkness. Where am I? In the middle of nowhere, deep in Laos’ countryside, in a pitch dark cave on a boat we two strangers.
Inside the cave, we reach our first stop. Think of a high-ceiling building you have visited, a cathedral, a hangar, or an Apple Store. Multiply its height three or four times. That’s how tall this cave feels. Inside this section, which was artificially lit, were these tall stalagmites that looked like buildings designed by aliens. The whole place felt like an alien city inside a cave. I take some pictures, but it’s hard to capture the scale.
We continue riding the boat inside the cave. We have to walk in some sections, push the boat up in others. The ride for the most part is in complete darkness, except for the light of our three headlamps. It feels like a long time in the darkness. We depend on one person that knows the way, not knowing when it’ll end or how.
I feel something inside me in this cave. It’s hard to describe. If this was a trip inside my subconscious mind, it would be one profound trip. It took me two days by motorcycle to get here. I had to drive through thick forests, deep forests, flooded forest to get here. What could I find so deep into my subconscious? I have no idea, but there is something there, lurking, something I could feel inside me, but hidden in the darkness. I think about Hades. Something inside me changes, but I couldn’t say what.
We see the light at the other end of the cave, glorious hues of blue reflecting through the entrance. There’s a stop a couple of minutes away from the cave exit. We rest for some minutes, and ride back in the cave to return.
After the cave, I knew I had to go back and finish this motorcycle trip. No extra days. This cave thought me something, and with that, I had to close that experience, knowing that I had received something that I’m not sure I was looking for.
