A Cambodian farmer is stuck in a dark cave for four days (3 photos)

The man was trapped and was preparing to die.





While most farmers around the world routinely use industrially produced fertilizers, many other countries still use traditional methods such as bat droppings. According to the Mirror, Sum Bora, a farmer in Cambodia's northwestern Battambang province, knew that some hard-to-reach caves in Mount Chakrai contained rich deposits of the foul-smelling fertilizer.

In August 2019, the then 28-year-old man decided to climb into a very narrow and dangerous cave to get fertilizer, knowing that he was slim and could squeeze into a space too tight for many of his colleagues.

By the dim light of his flashlight, Sum could see that the walls of the cave ahead were "moving" - a sure sign that a large colony of bats lived in the narrow cave, which meant there would be plenty of guano to collect. But disaster struck when he stepped over a tiny 15 cm wide gap. He accidentally dropped the flashlight down and, while trying to get it, fell and became trapped.



Since the farmer regularly left home for days at a time in search of the most fertile finds, his family was not overly concerned when he did not return that night. Unbeknownst to them, an attempt to find a lost lantern had resulted in Sum sliding into a narrow crevice and becoming stuck with no way to escape. Hours turned into days, and Sum became desperate.

Stuck and with no way to get help, he feared he would starve to death in the cave.

Sum later admitted in an interview with the Khmer Times newspaper, "I was desperate to stay alive, and if I had a knife, I would have killed myself." However, after three days of silence, Sum’s family grew concerned. One of his fellow guano hunters, a short Cambodian farmer, remembered Sum’s chatter about climbing Mount Chakrai – so the man went there.

When Sum’s brother peered through the crack, he heard a faint groan and called out, “Is that you, Sum?” and received a quiet reply, but could not identify its source. It was only when he climbed over the narrow gap that he saw Sum stuck in the crevice, hanging over a vast void.

Sum’s brother was unable to reach him on his own, and it took a 10-hour rescue operation involving some 200 rescuers to free the guano hunter.



Sum has fully recovered from the ordeal, but his days of collecting guano on his own are behind him.