Widding T R A V E L new: Batu Caves

Located at Gombak district, Selangor Malaysia, 13 km north of Kuala Lumpur, is a limestone hill with a series of caves and cave temples - the most popular Hindu shrine outside India. This is my ultimate Selangor discovery on my road trip to Malaysia on the Christmas day of 2010. This road trip is quite unrelated to the Christmas occasion but since it's a holiday, a stroll to any place is a reward! With the world's tallest statue of Murugan, standing at 42.7 meter high at the entrance to this attraction, Batu Caves is nowhere difficult to find in the state of Selangor. Spot that magnificent gold statue and you know you are at the right place!

To reach the cave, you have to climb 272 steeply steps towards the top. Climbing up the concrete stairs is nowhere near as bad as it seems. Sure you get a little tired but it's nothing that a normal person wouldn't do. Hold on to the side railings if you feel like falling backwards though. You will meet playful macaque monkeys along the stairwells. But, stay alert as they can be very territorial and they grab anything they find attractive that you are holding or dangling from your bag. They are actually adorable and fun to take photos with but quite disconcerting too when you are trying to navigate your way to the top and way down below.

We're friends.. surprising!

Adorable...

Once you reach the top you enter a massive cavern then through that you can get to this open cave which has about a hundred meter high ceiling and some Hindu ornaments smack at the sides or walls of the cave which I believe is the Cathedral Cave or Temple Cave, the biggest among the caves found in Batu Caves attraction. The place is supposedly for worship and a focal point of Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Malaysia but I'm surprised that it has now become a tourist attraction and somewhat tatty, lacking of regular maintenance and rubbish piles up everywhere. The people here should look into this problem and try to find a solution to maintain the entire appearance of this place. This is just the downside of this attraction. But overall, it is a nice discovery I have had during my road trip and an excellent way to introduce my readers to an attraction they can probably consider visiting other than the majestic view of the Malaysia's landmark, the Petronas Towers.