Where and How to reach?
Dandak is one of the most well-maintained cave of Kanger Valley National Park, as the curious tourist will surely get the textbook examples of every cavern structures. Here just after the cave we can see the helictites, followed by the classic examples of soda straws on the opposite wall of helictite.
Going few feets down, the narrow entrance opens into a large chamber showing exotic examples of flowstones in a couple of dripstones. This chamber is as big as it can hold more than 500 tourists at a single
span of time. On one of the adjacent wall nearby, we can see a very very narrow entrance for the second chamber series of cave.
Pic showing broken Stalactite (behind the author)
Way to Second chamber series
This cave is one of the favourite spot for researchers as this cave provides a perfect climate for researchers to read the palaeo and present climate on the basis of living fauna and fossils. Dr. Jayant Biswas, Founder and President of "National Cave Research and Protection Organization, India" has published a lot of research papers some of which has been published in some of the most reputed publishing houses of world like Speleologija(1) e.t.c. He has worked a lot for cave-biology. On the basis of fauna found here, he has named cave fauna as cavernicoles (cave organisms) and divided them into three types :
(A) Troglobites: Species which live wholly and permanently in the dark zone of caves. Mostly are albinic because camouflage colouring is of no use.
(B) Troglophiles: Species which live permanently in the dark zone, some of which can live in a suitable habitat away from the cave.
(C) Trogloxene: Species which visit or take shelter but do not complete their whole life cycle in caves. They go to the outer world periodically for some requirements, usually food. Further it can be divided as accidental trogloxene and habitual trogloxene. The affix terminology is sufficient to recongnize them.(2)
Arthropods- Armadillidium sp.,Diplopoda.
Molluscs: Opeas sp.
Amphibian: Hydrophylax malabaricus.
The cave has got its name after the division’s ancient name “Dandkaaranya”. Dandak was a demon who got cursed by a teacher (sage) of demons “Shankaracharya” and got his kingdom turned into dense forest within a fraction of time along with himself.