The diver smelled them before he saw them. On July 2, 2018, after nine days of searching through flooded tunnels beneath Doi Nang Non -- the "Mountain of the Sleeping Lady" on the Thai-Myanmar border -- British cave diver John Volanthen surfaced in a dark chamber and caught the scent of thirteen people who had been trapped underground without food for over a week. He swam toward the smell, and his headlamp found twelve boys and their coach huddled on a narrow rock shelf, four kilometers from daylight. "How many of you?" he asked. "Thirteen," came the answer. "Brilliant."
It started as an ordinary Saturday. On June 23, 2018, twelve members of the Wild Boars, a junior football team from Chiang Rai province, finished practice and followed their 25-year-old assistant coach, Ekkaphon Kanthawong, into Tham Luang Nang Non, a karstic cave complex they had explored before. The boys ranged in age from 11 to 16. Shortly after they entered, heavy monsoon rain began falling -- a month earlier than usual. Water surged through the limestone passages, sealing the exit behind them. By evening, head coach Nopparat Kanthawong had found twenty missed calls on his phone from worried parents. He raced to the cave mouth and found abandoned bicycles, backpacks, and rising water. The boys were somewhere inside the mountain, and there was no way to reach them.
What followed was an agonizing search. Thai Navy SEALs arrived on June 25 but found the water so murky that even with lights they could see nothing underwater. Teams from the United States Air Force, the Australian Federal Police, and the British Cave Rescue Council converged on the site. Policemen with sniffer dogs combed the mountainside above, looking for natural shafts that might offer an alternative entrance. Drones and robots were deployed, but no technology existed to scan for people deep underground. British divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen pushed through the flooded passages, laying guideline as they went, fighting strong currents and zero visibility. Rain kept falling. Water kept rising. For nine days, there was nothing but silence from inside the cave. Then, on July 2, Volanthen ran out of guideline, surfaced, and found thirteen faces staring back at him from the dark.
Finding the boys alive was a relief, but extracting them posed a problem no one had solved before. The group was four kilometers inside the mountain, past passages so narrow the tightest squeeze measured just 38 centimeters wide. The dive to reach them took six hours against the current. Several of the boys could not swim. Oxygen levels in the chamber were falling -- by July 8 they had dropped to 15 percent, well below the 19.5 percent minimum for normal human function. Monsoon rains were forecast for July 11, threatening to flood even the elevated shelf where the boys sheltered. Rescue planners weighed the options: teach the boys to dive, drill a rescue shaft through the limestone, or wait months for the monsoon to end. More than 100 shafts were bored into the mountain. None reached the cave. Meanwhile, over a billion liters of water were pumped from the system -- the equivalent of 400 Olympic swimming pools -- buying precious time.
The solution was radical and unprecedented. Australian anaesthetist Richard Harris, a cave diving specialist, proposed sedating the boys with ketamine to render them fully unconscious for the journey out. The Thai government granted Harris diplomatic immunity in case anything went wrong. Each boy was dressed in a wetsuit, fitted with a buoyancy aid and a full-face mask delivering 80 percent oxygen, then injected with ketamine, alprazolam to reduce anxiety, and atropine to steady heart rates and prevent choking. A handle was attached to each boy's back. The rescue divers described each child as "a package." The anaesthetic lasted 45 minutes to an hour, requiring top-up injections during the three-hour extraction. Eighteen divers -- thirteen international cave specialists and five Thai Navy SEALs -- worked in relays, each lead diver guiding one unconscious boy through flooded tunnels, pushing them through tight spots, tethered together in case of separation in the zero-visibility water.
On July 8, the first four boys emerged. On July 9, four more. On July 10, the final four boys and coach Ekkaphon were brought out as water levels in Chamber 3 began rising behind them. The rescue had involved 10,000 people, more than 100 divers, representatives from roughly 100 government agencies, 900 police officers, and 2,000 soldiers. It cost the life of Saman Kunan, a 37-year-old former Thai Navy SEAL who had been working airport security when he volunteered to help. He lost consciousness while delivering air tanks and could not be resuscitated. A second diver, Beirut Pakbara, died the following year from a blood infection contracted during the operation. When the rescue was complete, the boys' families, military officials, and thousands of volunteers gathered at the cave entrance to give thanks and to ask forgiveness from Jao Mae Tham, the cave goddess, for the intrusion of pumps, ropes, and people into her mountain. Coach Ekkaphon, a former Buddhist monk who had kept the boys calm through meditation during their eighteen days underground, was hailed as a hero by their parents. Three of the boys and the coach, who had been stateless, were granted Thai citizenship in September 2018.
Tham Luang Nang Non is located at 20.38N, 99.87E in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand, beneath Doi Nang Non on the Thai-Myanmar border. The mountain range is said to resemble a sleeping woman when viewed from the east. The nearest major airport is Chiang Rai International Airport (VTCT/CEI), approximately 60 km to the south. The cave entrance sits in a lush, mountainous landscape at the edge of the Golden Triangle region. Monsoon season runs June through October with heavy cloud cover and reduced visibility.