The full story of Thailand’s extraordinary cave rescue

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On 23 June, 12 boys went exploring in Thailand's Chiang Rai province with their football coach - and ended up trapped deep inside a cave underneath a mountain. The BBC's Helier Cheung and Tessa Wong were at the scene as a dramatic rescue bid gripped the world.

 

What happened over those two weeks is a remarkable story of friendship, human endurance - and the lengths some people will go to save someone else's child.

 

Here our reporters tell the full story of the Wild Boars.

The birthday party that went wrong

It all began with a birthday.

 

On Saturday 23 June, Peerapat "Night" Sompiangjai turned 17 - a milestone most young people around the world would want to celebrate in style.

 

His family had prepared a bright yellow SpongeBob SquarePants birthday cake and several colourfully wrapped presents at their home in a rural village in Mae Sai district.

 

But Night wasn't rushing home that day. He was out with his friends, the other members of local youth football team the Wild Boars, and their assistant coach, Ekkapol "Ake" Chantawong.

 

When their football practice ended, they raced through the rice paddies on their bicycles and up into the forested hills that lately had been blanketed in rain.

 

Their destination: the Tham Luang cave, a favourite haunt for the boys, who loved exploring the nooks and crannies of the mountain range towering over Mae Sai.

 

Once at the mouth of Tham Luang, they stashed their bikes and bags by the cave entrance.

 

The team and their young coach were ready to celebrate Night's birthday. They had often ventured deep into Tham Luang, sometimes as far as 8km, for initiation rites where they would write the names of new team members on a cave wall.

 

In high spirits, they clambered into the cave with just their torches. They didn't need much else - after all, they were only planning to be there for an hour.

 

They would not emerge until two weeks later.

 

Back at Night's home, his family began to worry. His birthday cake sat untouched.

 

Where were the Wild Boars?

 

Snaking for 10km beneath the cloud-swathed mountain range that separates Thailand and Myanmar is Tham Luang, the fourth biggest Thai cave system.

 

Named after a mountain shaped like a reclining woman, its full name is Tham Luang Khun Nam Nang Non - "the great cave and water source of the sleeping lady mountain". Rich in folklore, it is a popular destination for day-trippers - and adventurous children.

 

It has its dangers - people have gone missing in Tham Luang before. And once monsoon season starts in July, the cave goes from innocuous to extremely dangerous.

 

The cave can flood up to 5m (16ft) during the rainy season, and should only be entered between November and April.

 

"The water is moving, it's muddy and there is almost no visibility," local guide Joshua Morris told the BBC.

 

And once the cave floods - it's risky even for experienced divers.

 

Almost everyone in Mae Sai knows this. So when the parents of the Wild Boars began to worry about their missing boys, they headed straight to the cave. The boys' plans to visit Tham Luang had been discussed in a group chat on a messaging app with other friends.

 

They found the bikes, the bags, and some football shoes outside. They raised the alarm.

 

Deep in the cave, the Wild Boars found themselves in trouble. It had been raining for the last few days, and all that water falling on the mountain had to go somewhere.

 

That somewhere was the Tham Luang cave system, which was fast filling up.

 

One initial account from the boys suggests they were caught off-guard by a flash flood. They needed to get out, but instead had no choice but to scramble even deeper into the cave.

 

The Wild Boars eventually found themselves marooned on a small rocky shelf about 4km from the cave entrance, past a normally dry point known as Pattaya Beach which by now was flooded.

 

Swallowed up by an unforgiving mountain and surrounded by darkness, the boys and the coach lost all sense of time. Fear, perhaps even terror, would no doubt have crept in.

 

But they were nothing but determined to survive. The group used rocks to dig 5m deeper into the shelf, to create a cavern where they could huddle together and keep warm.

 

Coach Ake, a former monk, taught the boys meditation techniques - to help them stay calm and use as little air as possible - and told them to lie still to conserve their strength.

 

 

But an extraordinary set of circumstances also worked in their favour.

 

They apparently had no food - but they did have a supply of drinkable water in the form of moisture dripping from the cave walls.

 

It was dark, but they had their torches. There was also enough air for a while - because the porous limestone and cracks in the rocks meant air could come through.

 

They had the right conditions to survive - at least for a little while. And most importantly, the Wild Boars had one another.

 

Now came the hardest bit - hoping for rescue.

 

Outside the cave, a full-blown rescue operation was quickly unfolding.

 

Authorities called in the elite Thai Navy Seals, the national police, and other rescue teams. Local volunteers also pitched in.

 

Initial investigations found footprints at one of the chambers in the cave - but no other sign the boys were still alive.

 

The Wild Boars were somewhere in the twisted depths of Tham Luang - but where exactly? And more importantly - how could rescuers get to them?

 

Exploring the cave was a challenge - most of the Navy divers had little cave diving experience. And the weather was merciless - heavy rainfall meant the water level was still rising, flooding chambers and cutting off rescuers from parts of the cave.

 

Engineers desperately tried to pump water out of the cave - but struggled, at least at first.

 

At the start, "no one really had any idea what to do", one volunteer said. Officials brought whatever equipment they could think of - small water pumps, long pipes, knives and shovels - but much of it was apparently unsuitable.

 

They even tried drilling into the mountainside, desperate to find cracks into the cave system which they could squeeze into, and used drones with thermal sensors to try to locate the boys.

 

Rescuers also turned to the villagers for local knowledge. The Thai Navy Seals found a boy, a Wild Boar member who happened to have skipped the cave expedition. He recalled a place in the complex they'd visited before - called Pattaya Beach.

 

Could the missing 13 be there?

 

Amid the flurry of rescue operations, a small group kept vigil at the mouth of the cave.

 

These were the boys' families, worriedly offering prayers for their lives. Among them was Tum Kantawong, the godmother of Coach Ake.

 

Every day she went up the mountain, carrying fruits, incense and candles. "It was to show respect to the spirit that protects the cave. I asked her to protect the 13 kids," she said.

 

The group gradually expanded to include concerned teachers from the schools the Wild Boars attended.

 

"We wanted to be the first to welcome the boys when they came out," said school administrator Ampin Saenta, who is so close to one boy, Adul, that she calls herself his "mama-teacher".

 

Classmates of the Wild Boars held group prayers, sang songs of encouragement into the cave, folded paper cranes, and posted messages of hope on school noticeboards.

 

Villagers rallied together, donating money and hundreds of packages of food to the relatives of the boys and their coach.

 

That sense of community soon began to spread, as the story gained the nation's attention. Volunteers from other parts of Thailand flew in, while Thai social media lit up with expressions of love and support.

 

But it was about to get even bigger.

 

The first international rescuers arrived on Thursday 28 June.

 

These were US air force rescue specialists, and cave divers from the UK, Belgium, Australia, Scandinavia, and many other countries. Some had volunteered, and some were called in by Thai authorities.

 

Others were roped in when it became clear just how monumental the search effort would be.

 

Over the next few days, they and the Thai divers would fight a constant battle with the elements. They had to swim against a strong current, and were often forced back by rising floodwaters.

 

On Sunday 1 July - just over a week after the boys went missing - the rescuers made some progress. They reached a large cavern that would be later dubbed "chamber three" and serve as a key base for the divers.

 

It also happened to be the birthday of Note - one of the "Thai cave boys", as they were now dubbed by the media. All, however, were still lost to the world.

 

But not for long. The very next day, two British divers made an incredible discovery.

'Thirteen? Brilliant!'

 

John Volanthen and Rick Stanton had been braving Tham Luang's narrow, murky passageways for several days, laying out guide ropes and searching for signs of life.

 

On Monday, the two men finally reached Pattaya Beach. But there was nothing.

 

They continued onwards into the darkness. Then, a few hundred metres further, they found an air pocket.

 

"Wherever there is air space we surface, we shout, we smell," John told the BBC. It's a standard procedure for such rescue operations.

 

"We smelt the children before we saw or heard them."

 

Soon, the light from John's torch illuminated an electrifying sight - the boys emerged from the darkness, coming down the ledge towards him.

 

Rick started counting the boys, while John asked: "How many of you?"

 

"Thirteen!" came the reply in English.

 

"Thirteen? Brilliant!"

 

Next to John, Rick couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "They're all alive!"

 

The lost Wild Boars had been found.

 

If interested, please read the rest of the miraculous story < here >.