Kitum Cave

Kitum Cave is located in Bungoma County in the Western of Kenya.

Kitum Cave is in Mount Elgon National Park and extends about 200 metres or about 700 feet into the side of Mount Elgon near the Kenyan border with Uganda. It became well known in the 1980’s when two European visitors contracted Marburg virus while there. Many years later, it was discovered that the carriers of the disease were bats residing in the caves and that the disease was air borne.

It is one of five named “elephant caves” of Mount Elgon where animals, including elephants, have been “mining” the rock for its sodium rich salts. The elephants use their tusks to break off pieces of the cave wall that they later chew and swallow. Their mining action leaves the walls scratched and furrowed which is likely to be the reason that the caves have enlarged over time.

Of note is that there is also a deep crevasse into which young elephants have fallen and died.

Ref: wikipedia