"Mongolia is kind of close, right?" Story about an attempt to ski everywhere in the world where there's snow. And in some places where there isn't. On and off-piste skiing on all continents, skiing into craters of live volcanoes, caving, climbing, photography, and travel.
A very nice, very small cave near Frankfurt! On the way to the airport, even. I've been having layovers in Frankfurt and Munich many times, and always looked for the possibility of caves nearby, close enough to drive during the few hours. But nothing was ever close enough. But now when I was on a business trip to Frankfurt I found out that in the suburbs there's a cave, Gagernhöhle, that you can quite easily visit.
The coordinates are N 50.150202 E 8.452332. The cave is right on the side of a stream, the Liederbach and there's a nice foot bridge to cross over the stream. The cave is right next to buildings and roads as well, the easiest way to get to the cave is to park somewhere near the sports/playing field and walk 100 meters to reach the cave.
The cave looks naturally, but is actually man-made, by Friedrich von Gagern, from the Gagern family well-known in the area.
More information about the place can be found from the Kelkheim Discover page and the Outdoordad page. The cave is also called Fritzens Ruhe or Fritzen's rest, for the memory of the Fredrich's passing in the battle of Kandern in 1848. Yet another alternate name the cave is Fuchshöhle, for Fuchs, who carefully carved the cave per Friedrich's instructions.
I also 3D-scanned the cave with my iPhone LiDAR Scanner (using the Polycam app, and converted to a map using my own software, Cave Outliner).
Here's the generated map:
A high-res PDF of the map can be found here. The 3D model itself in GLTF format is here and BLENDER format here, and if you want to rotate it on your browser screen, click here. But a fly-through video is also below:
More photos below. First the information sign:
From inside the cave:
Cave from the outside:
A detail from the cave:
Model screenshot:
Path and stream leading to the cave:
The author, in a taxi in business clothes .. but I did change before hitting cave:
Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Grotte delle Busserailles is a small show cave in Valtournenche in northern Italy, four kilometers down the road from the ski resort Cervinia. Actually, it is more of a deep gorge with the roof partially closed. The wonderful part of the cave is the waterfall falling down from the river to the deeper part of the cave.
The cave is a show cave, open every day between 10 and 18, and the entrance fee is only 2.5€. Do visit, if you are nearby! I was skiing in Cervinia, had seen the signs for the cave before but didn't have time to visit on previous trips. Now I did :-)
There's a few parking spots right by the cave, and more 50 meters up the road, behind the previous curve. There's also a restaurant at the place, where they also sell tickets to the cave. In front of the building there are two medium-size potholes / devil's churns, and I think they also organize tours to look at the larger devil's churns under the building. I didn't have time for that on this trip.
For the less adventurous, maybe visiting the cave in the summer would be better. Now the place was quite wet, including dripping water from the roof in the cave itself. Also some rock chips had fallen down, probably due to the winter's freezing temperatures.
The coordinates are N 45.8996321 E 7.6166609. More information about the cave can be found from Wikipedia, Show caves of the World page, and here. The cave is 104 meters long.
Video:
Photos:
Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
A day off on a conference trip in Bangkok. I've already skied here some years ago (in an indoor ski simulator), so what's left? Caves, of course. Caves. Hours spent in front of Google Maps and DuckDuckGo reveal though that there's nothing in Bangkok or even in the outskirts. I'll have to go further. The absolutely best and most interesting caves would be out of my reach, would require driving for five hours or even flying. But, the Ratchaburi region does offer many interesting caves, and it is only a two and a half hour drive away. I hire a driver for the day and off we go! What we find, though, is quite surprising. It turns out that half of the caves are housing buddhist temples, and even the other half has a shrine or statue or a place of quieting down.
I manage to visit five caves: one commercial show cave, two wild caves but with prepared steps, signage, and even lights in the cave (and buddha statues), and two temples that are built inside caves.
Temperature was hot, 40 degrees higher than at home:
The commercial show cave was the Khao Bin Cave, in Hin Kong. The coordinates are N 13.59190003 E 99.66753588. Entrance fee was only 20 Baht, or about 60 cents... very cheap. On site there's some shops, bathrooms, a ticket booth, a lake and some shade. A nice place to chill out. But you get to tour the cave by yourself. The cave length is 250 or 300 meters depending on various sources, such as Patrick Le Petit's page, but certainly felt much longer, I spent an hour in there.
The cave is super hot, be warned! You will need something to drink, and nothing else than a t-shirt and shorts. Exit if you feel ill. The temperature must have been 40+ degrees. Very hot, almost uncomfortably so. At least if you hang around taking photos...
The wild caves were large as well, the first one I went to was the Chomphon Cave in Chom Bueng. The coordinates are N 13.62560994 E 99.58752022. This is a wild cave, but again with a sign, stairs and lights set up for your convenience, along with the Buddha statues...
And oh boy was this a wonderful cave! Once you descend the steep initial stairs, you'll hit the first small chamber, filled with bats camping right above your head. Many, many bats. Very interesting! And then you go to the next, larger chamber, and now you can't see the bats in the darkness, but you hear them. Even more of them!
Then you keep hiking. And hiking. Then you light dawns on you and you arrive at the last, massive chamber. The light from three small holes at the high roof shines down, and reveals a standing Buddha statue... and a Buddha statue laying on its side... and it is a religious experience. Blessed by God's light in the depths of a massive cave.
If you only visit one cave, I recommend the Chomphon cave. Such an experience from many respects. But please be careful with the apes around the entrance, leave you car in a safe place and look after your belongings.
More information about this cave can be found again from the earlier Ratchaburi links as well as from a Reddit thread, Wikidata and Vivutravel, The cave length according to Patrick Le Petit is 290 m.
Video:
Photos:
The other wild cave was the Paradise Cave, further south in Khao Yoi which is actually already in the next region south of Ratchaburi, the Phetchaburi. The coordinates are N 13.2356080 E 99.8266368. The cave also goes by the name Heaven Cave or the Tham Sawan.
You'll have to hike up maybe hundred meters on a well maintained path and steps to get to the cave. But it is well sign-posted. Just be careful again with apes, I met many friendly apes and cute ones .. but also one that seemed to be threatening me with open jaw and following me around... but in the end I was not a victim of an ape bit and continued :-)
Again, the cave comes with lights and prepared paths. It begins with a quite steep descent with two sets of almost vertical ladders. The going gets easy, but the cave continues deeper into the mountain. I was a bit in a rush, so I almost turned back before the end, but that would have been a big mistake. Again, at the end I was revealed to a very Chomphon Cave -like setup: a massive chamber with light shining through from a couple holes, and a shrine to respect the gods. At some time during the day, the light from the holes will also shine on a tortoise statue, I missed that time by a bit though, see the first picture below.
As you can see from the sign picture few further further down, there's supposed to be another cave, Phra Sri-aaraya Cave, here as well. It would have been beyond my stop on the hike to Paradise Cave, I had to return and not continue due to lack of time. But I can't find much information about that cave, except a Google Maps entry that seems to be in a wrong place, not according to the signage on site.
But back to the Paradise Cave:
I actually tried to find more caves, but two ones escaped my ability to actually find them. Apparently caves are plentiful enough that they don't necessarily attract enough visitors, so the Google Maps entries are often faulty. The two ones that I tried to find were Fa Tho Cave and Tham Cham Cave in Ko Phlappla. Afterwards I did find their locations, you may wish to go, they look easily approachable, though both with a hike up some stairs. They are in locations N 13.5758502 E 99.7749234 (Fa Tho), N 13.574298 E 99.772890 (Tham Cham), and N 13.5726788 E 99.7708089 (unidentified cave). I should say though that I am a bit uncertain about Tham Cham, I may also mix it with Tham Chim, possibly another cave. But I am fairly certain Tham Cham wasn't where Google Maps would show it to be.
I was unable to find any information about the unidentified cave, but there's links for Fa Tho here and Tham Cham here. Also more information available in the earlier general links, e.g., Patrick Le Petit's page.
The unidentified cave:
The wrong path towards the Tham Cham cave:
The snake statue near the steps towards both the no-caves-here (left of the statue) and the Fa Tho cave (right):
The temple caves were Tham Rusi Khai Ngu, in Ko Phlappla and then Khao Yoi Cave in Khao Yoi.
The first one was Tham Rusi Khai Ngu, it is at N 13.57492465 E 99.77732406. It is a small cave (as far as I could see, I did not enter the backrooms behind the temple itself or under, they may have continued further).
Remember to take off your shoes and were reasonable clothes for entering a religious facility. But you can go in and even take photos. Please leave a small donation in the donation box by the door.
The second one, Khao Yoi Cave is at N 13.23438612 E 99.82841520. As a cave it is medium-sized, but wow, what a wonderful temple they have built inside. And tastefully, too. It is just spectacular.
The cave is on three levels, the entrance is to the main hall that houses for instance a massive Buddha statue on its side, right by the entrance when you come in, some open space, and very high colorfully lit spaces above. Then there are steps to the next level above, including an open roof hole towards the sky.
There's steps also down to a "basement", but it certainly isn't a dungeon... again, very high ceilings and nicely lit colorful spaces above you in what is a mostly vertical cavity. Then there's statues.. including a massive golden snake statue attached to the rock...
Well worth visiting, and just by the parking lot too, no need to climb more than a few steps. Recommended!
Additional Thailand caves, ones that I did not visit, are discussed in a separate article here.
Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
