A lone widow, like a weathered willow, is bent with age and making an almost imperceptible passage up one of the broad, dry tracks that drape the northern Hungarian mountain village of Jósvafó. Like the town itself, she is seemingly lost in a purgatory of dignified mourning and carries with her a silent mystery that is reflected in the ominously overgrown gardens and ancient stone facades of the village.
This mesmerising scene of alien stoicism is suddenly pack-raped when – like alley cats pouncing on a rare, native tortoise – a horseshoe of trigger-happy Japanese, Russian and Italian photographers spring from a cluster of trees a metre away and subject the hapless woman to an acid bath of flash bulbs and probing zooms. For one whole excruciating minute, this silent and forebearing local has become a gaudy Hollywood starlet as she hobbles on her cane down the makeshift dusty red carpet of old Jósvafó.
The bizarre, farcical clash of worlds continues inside the local craft shop that faces this street. Here, in a humble converted barn where locals show space age visitors how to make vividly coloured balls of felt using goats’ hair and soap, a well-intentioned American bloke has pinned one of the bemused local craftswomen to a hallway inside and is barking with some urgency, You guys got a blog? Man, you guys have gotta get online.”
The woman nods politely back, her protective arms weighed down around her waist by a plastic bucket full of goat’s wool: “B-log?” she pleads. “Yeah, God! A blog. A blog. All the big guys are doin’ it. Talk to me later.”
It seems this time-struck village, with its hypnotising ruined homesteads freckled with tip-toeing cats and brooding black windows that stare out onto the sun-parched streets, has got an uphill battle as it faces a future with tourism. Jósvafó is a startling place – a deeply beautiful watercolour of haunted structures, long grasses and lost heydays. Today, it’s a bitch to masters in khakis carrying long lenses.
The locals should be growing used to the publicity; their’s, after all, is the town that borders the exit to the crushingly ancient Aggtelek system, Hungary’s Aladdin’s Cave of geological wonders. These underground cathedrals are why the foreigners are here, and the town has managed to pick up a symbiotic tourist trade from the Aggtelek hype. Someone should have told them there was no such thing as a free lunch.
Only 400 metres away, it’s a totally different world at Aggtelek, where tourists are mustered to the turnstiled-and-ticket-boothed entrance of the famous Baradla Cave, which is the crown jewel in the sprawling cave system, featuring the overwhelming Giants’ Room with stalactite formations 30m high, 125m long and 55m wide.
Formed out of the Karst hills 500 million years ago, the cave system comprises Baradla and its smaller, prettier sister cave Béke, which, supposedly, contains blessed air that can cure asthmatics. Always short on unexpected luck, I carry my undefeated Ventolin puffer into Baradla for a five-hour tour through the glittering bowels of the Hungarian-Slovakian underworld.
Most of the Aggtelek cave system is buried within Hungary, but its western branch extends to the Czech Republic, continuing in the cave systems of Domica and the Gömör-Torna karstland (the border station 1km away from the entrance to Baradla Cave means you can head across, without a passport if you’re on a guided tour, and have a gawk at the Slovakian Domica Cave as well).
Inside Baradla Cave, the crushing company of fellow tourists is washed roofwards by the vast chasms dripping and peaking with goliath stalectite and stalagmite formations that are still growing and often joining hands to form massive glistening pillars.
Like most ‘show caves’ around the world, the matrix of side branches and corridors that swirl around the 7km long main branch of the cave are paved with user-friendly sidewalks of concrete and metal railings, with the spectacular formations emphasised by concealed torches and piped music.
Baradla, with a daunting total length (including these side passages) of 25km, is the main ventricle of the Aggtelek and Slovakian Karst, which together form a daunting geological and geographical unit. But the true appreciation that is garnered from caving is the awesome timescale of cave formation – a nebulaic statistic that dwarfs and engulfs the thick forests and humble local cultures of villages like the aforementioned Jósvafó that exist above ground.
The Beradla Cave is a jewel crafted at the patient and relentless mercy of water, as forest streams got into the system of cracks in the limestone baserock and, by dissolving and eroding the limestone, slowly widened the crevices, formed the present, jaw- dropping passages.
The dripping water deposited its lime content grain by grain, forming a confection of grotesquely shaped and subtly coloured figureheads that have inspired the imaginations of discoverers for hundreds of years (there have even been digs that reveal the presence of prehistoric man), like the shapes of clouds inspire the minds of children. Proof is in the fantastical names given to the formations – the Dragon’s Head, the Tiger, the Mother in Law’s Tongue, the Hall of Columns and the Hall of Giants.
The other Aggtelek cave, with prettier dripstone formations than those of Baradla Cave, was explored by László Jakucs and his colleagues on August 4, 1952, following a series of failed attempts. The 5km-long Béke Cave can be approached both from Aggtelek and Jósvafó. Unlike Baradla Cave, Béke has the Komló karst water stream flowing through it, with water hovering at a constant 9.5°C – a veritable sauna during prehistoric winters.
Béke Cave starts at Aggtelek Nagy Valley, extending to Komlós Spring at Jósvafó. It’s claimed ‘medicinal powers’ were detected as early as it was explored, but it was only when it was later surveyed by medical researchers that it turned out that the mould and soil fungi in the air of the cave produce antibiotics which can cure respiratory diseases. An underground sanatorium for asthmatic patients was promptly built as a place to shelve the huddled masses.
But who is to save the huddled locals of Jósvafó? If only they could blog for help.”