Batu Caves

A little ways outside of KL are the Batu Caves, a Hindu temple complex built into a series of limestone caves.  The main deity on display is Lord Murugan who has a huge gold statue at the front, but there are tons of smaller statues and areas of worship for other Hindu deities.  While the statue is impressive, the best part about the complex is all the colors.  The rainbow painting on the steps is a fairly recent addition, but all the temple areas are brightly colored as well, so the whole thing feels like walking through a rainbow.

Jeff got a fantastic picture of the stairs, since we were there early enough to have them pretty much to ourselves.

Getting there in the first place though was quite an adventure.  We went with some embassy friends, and we got to make use of our car's extra seats for the first time.  We put Elena in the back, back, so that we could fit two extra adults in the middle.  She thought it was great.

I had volunteered to drive, since I've been the one doing the driving here so far, but this was my first time going past the embassy.  We were prepared to get a bit lost, but I would say we took every wrong turn you could possibly take between here and there.  In our defense, the roads here are incredibly confusing.  First of all, they split constantly, and you can't really tell from the map on the phone where you're supposed to go.  Secondly, each route has at least three different names on it, but for some reason, none of those three names were the three names on the directions we were getting from our phone.  Basically, it became a game of chance, and we lost, repeatedly.  The good news though is that we started early, so there wasn't much traffic, and Google just kept redirecting as we got lost until eventually we got there, all in one piece, and with only one three point turn to get out of a dead end road.

There was a large parking lot, which I'm sure fills up during festivals, but things are just starting to open up and it was about 8:30 in the morning, so we had no problem finding a prime parking spot.  We paid 2 RM on the way in, which is about 50 cents, so it was nice to have something be easy after all our ordeals getting there.

There was a beautiful temple on the left as we first walked up, and then a plaza filled with pigeons at the foot of the steps.

We spent quite a bit of time in the plaza taking pictures.

When we first got there, it was mostly full of pigeons, and there was a lady off to one side selling bird food and bananas.  Elena was excited about the pigeons, so she ran around chasing them.

We had heard though that there were a LOT of monkeys at the caves, and sure enough, as though they sensed tourists buying bananas below, they came leaping and sliding down the stairs and proceeded to climb all over the temple as well.

I had just finished taking a picture of the girls in front of the temple, and they were not too sure about this new development.

We had friends in Thailand who were attacked by these kinds of monkeys, so we're quite wary of them, and we've passed that on to the girls, but Elena's animal loving instincts eventually won out, especially when she saw the mommy and baby monkeys, so our friends shared some bananas with her, and she fed the monkeys too.  Even Viv gave it a go.

We took a few more pictures,

and then headed up the stairs.

We took it easy and paused for water breaks and photo ops.  We had to be careful with our phones and water bottles though, so that the monkeys didn't think they were treats for them.

But finally, we made it to the top.

The caves were a very different world from the rainbow steps we had taken to get there.

There are smaller offshoots that usually cost extra to visit.  Those weren't open when we went there, but the main cavern was open and free.  The first person who found the cave thought that the opening looked like Lord Murugan's spear, which is why he dedicated the caves to him.  Once you go through the opening, there's a large cavern with a temple building to the left, and then another series of stairs to go up to an even higher point.

For people walking up the steps on pilgrimage, they do it barefoot.  Since we are tourists, they were fine with us keeping our shoes on for the stairs, but there were very clear signs that no shoes were allowed in the temple areas.  We thought it would be more respectful to stay in the main part of the cavern and admire things from there.  We really liked the peacock theme.

A lot of the reviews I read online said don't bother paying for a tour, because it's easy to get there and free to get in, but it would have been really nice to have had a guide who could have explained some of the symbolism to us.  There were also clearly religious activities going on.  I haven't been able to find any good explanation online, so I'm hoping that before we leave Malaysia, we can go back with a knowledgeable guide and really learn about everything.  This visit though, was about the climbing experience, so we went up the next flight of stairs.

There was another temple up there, open to the elements.

Looking back down the stairs was a bit vertigo inducing, but it gave a good view of the cavern below.

Both of the girls were brave enough to get their pictures taken at the top of the steps.

By that point, Elena was ready to go back down, but everyone else was still leisurely exploring, so after having her pull on my arm for a while, I agreed to take her back down.  The steps are steep and fairly shallow, so I had been a bit worried about the descent, but we took it slow and paid attention to where we were putting our feet.  A couple times we had to walk around families of monkeys that were hanging out on the stairs.

When we were about halfway down, a man called out to Elena, "Baby! Baby, come here!"  He had a tied up orange skirt, and no shirt on, but his torso was decorated with several tattoos in what looked like Hindi or Sanskrit.  He held out a flower necklace to Elena, and when she walked over to him, he placed it around her neck.  We had seen similarly clad people doing this to babies in the temples, and the babies had some kind of yellow powder in their hair, so I guess he thought Elena fit the bill.  We both thanked him, and Elena beamed with her new treasure.

It was a lovely and unexpected souvenir, and she still has it hanging in her room.  Finally, we made it to the bottom, and I sent Jeff this picture to let him know where we were.

Elena was surprised to find that her legs were shaky, so we found a place to sit in the shade and wait for the rest of our group.  The going down was easier than going up, but it was a LOT of steps, and honestly, my legs were a bit shaky too.  Eventually, the rest of our crew made their way down, and Jeff got a picture of the sun beginning to encroach on the plaza.  It rises from behind the mountain, so the afternoon is the absolute worst time to do the steps.

There were some food places that were starting to open up at the bottom, but Elena was DONE.  She held it together pretty well, but we knew a meltdown was imminent, so we said goodbye, left Viv with her group of friends, and headed home.

The trip home went MUCH more smoothly.  There were lots of signs for KLCC and Ampang, so I just followed those until things looked familiar again.  By the time we got home, we were absolutely starving, so we ordered burgers and ate them out on the balcony to continue our outdoor day.

It was a very full morning, but it made us feel like we really live in Malaysia, and we hope we can have more of these types of outings soon.