Trip to Batu Caves: November 18, 2013
North of KL you will find Batu Caves. Named after the Batu River and the town it can be found in. This cave is dedicated to Murugan-Hindu God of War, and is a very popular Hindu Shrine outside India.
You can get to Batu caves via bus from KL, however i cheated a bit and decided to make most of my time and joined a hostel tour called the 7 Wonders tour. I figured the price roughly under $20 for the entire day, which would take me to 7 different locations that are very spread apart is worth the money…
At the moment we drove up to the caves you can already see this prominent statue.
At the base of the cave, Tuktuk and I stop for a photo.
We were challenged by our guide to carry a banana in our hands to see if we can make it up. We didn’t want to risk being mauled by a monkey so we refused it. A guy in our group was thirsty and decided to buy a fresh coconut before climbing the 272 stairs up. He sipped his coconut up a few steps and then it was batted away by one of the monkeys. The monkeys were very aggressive if they think there is food on you second to food they enjoyed water bottles. We were all advised to keep the bottles in our bags and we were not to reach for it because the monkeys will then take your bag in search for goods.
harmless monkey? Nope, watching to see who is carrying any goods.
a water bottle confiscated by a monkey
I stopped to take a breather, and to capture the detail of the entrance.
The back of the statue is just as impressive as the front
The king of the monkeys.
After climbing up those steps we reached the Cathedral cave. Impressive height, then we see more steps to find more caves towards the back of the hill.
I found a stalactite and naturally stood underneath it.
Deities Perched on top
On our way down we were greeting by more of these malicious monkeys. We had nothing so they didn’t really bother us. This one had a youngster clutching to her.
View of Batu Below
We made it down. Now for some tourist photo ops.
Bam, Mandatory Jumping Photo.
Since we were at a Hindu temple the restaurants that flanked the caves were all vegetarians. No problem with me. We ended up here and it wasn’t a disappointment.
I chose this selection of rice and vegetables
Curry Sauces that was delicious, all mildly spicy.
We all enjoyed lunch, this German couple with our group loved it so much. Their pale complexion changed from Alabaster White to a Bright red from all the spices. It was a great climb and the meal was worth the wait. Lucky for us we decided to do the climb up before Lunch. Then the torrential downpour came as we ended our meal. Typical in Malaysia, it lasted about a couple of hours and then it was beautiful again.
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