Speleological Links

A Caver’s Bookmarks

This is a brief list of the very most important websites about underground sights. There is absolutely no chance for link exchange, and only a very small chance for links submitted to be included. If you think there is a site which absolutely deserves to be listed here, please send an email to: E-mail: contact.


showcaves.com is structured so that each underground attraction has its own page. The links to this location are provided there. In general, it is beneficial to have cross-references to a topic; this is, so to speak, the basic idea behind the World Wide Web and hypertext. Unfortunately, there have been several unfortunate developments recently that render the concept of static links absurd:

  1. Since around 2020, domains have been dying off in droves. The reason for this is unknown to us, but we suspect that many institutions simply no longer see the point of having a website.
  2. Many are switching to social media sites, especially Facebook.
  3. Many are replacing their website with a portal, what was previously a static page with a URL, for example a cave tour, is now an event that comes dynamically from a database and no longer has a fixed URL.
  4. When people lose interest or die, the websites disappear. This is particularly curious, as one would expect the community to take over when the websites are actually not private, but rather a service for a community. In our experience, this is unfortunately rarely the case.
  5. Browsers now expect https pages, and pages without https are often classified as a security risk from the outset. Unfortunately, the technology is not yet very user-friendly. On the one hand, it involves costs, and on the other hand, the certificates have to be renewed annually. In addition, you can also make mistakes in the content of the certificate or have to generate a new one if you modify the domain name.
  6. Unfortunately, switching to https usually also involves redesigning the website, which additionally changes the paths and file names. This is usually because the old technology no longer supports all requirements, or simply because the changeover is taken as an opportunity to do so.
  7. And finally, in non-English-speaking countries, many English translations are deactivated. On the one hand, it is often no longer worthwhile because foreign tourism has collapsed, especially in countries such as Russia. On the other hand, the effort involved in maintaining a bilingual website is considerable and often cannot be undertaken by volunteers. Finally, it is no longer necessary because browsers can now translate any language in the world when loading the page.

All these problems have led us to thoroughly review our own links. This applies to these link lists as well as to the individual pages. We have now deleted thousands of links, switched to https, or switched to the other language. In doing so, we are increasingly encountering the problem that Cloudfront and other protection mechanisms simulate broken links or use redirects to simulate that a link needs to be maintained. We have therefore decided to rigorously delete such links in future. Please use a search engine of your choice instead.


Info Index Topic Hierarchical Countries Maps General Information Books Gallery Links Statistics