The Batu Caves Tour – Part 2

Saturday, April 30, 2011

A little history about these caves:  Located approximately 11 kilometers to the north of Kuala Lumpur, Batu Caves is a limestone hill comprising three major caves and a number of smaller ones. Considered one of Kuala Lumpur’s most frequented tourist attractions, this 100-year-old temple features idols and statues erected inside the main caves and around it. Incorporated with interior limestone formations said to be around 400 million years old, the temple is considered an important religious landmark by Hindus.

Cathedral Cave – the largest and most popular cavern in Batu Caves – houses several Hindu shrines beneath its 100-metre-high arched ceiling. At the foot of Batu Hill are two other cave temples – the Art Gallery Cave and Museum Cave – which houses numerous Hindu statues and paintings. Visitors can scale 272 steps to access the caves and as you ascend the steps a multitude of cheeky and bold long tailed-macaque monkeys will dog your footsteps.

We think we are ready for these steps… little did we know what it was REALLY going to be like!!  So foolish we are… we are young at heart… but this is even pushing it.  We walk everywhere in Shanghai… but this would put our fitness to the test.   I think we were a bit naïve… to say the least!

The closer we get… the steeper and more imposing those steps get!!  What were we thinking?

Entrance to one of the other caves we did not have time to explore.

Everywhere you look are lots of ornamental buildings and idols.

A prayer temple… all the folks going in here were taking off their shoes and entering bare footed.

We start the climb… oh man… is that the look of doubt on his face?

This would be the first of many little friends moving up and down the rails and posts along the stairs as we made the climb.   You must take care with your camera and anything else that they could easily get to and lift off you.  Cute little thieves!!

Watch out… they are hanging everywhere… waiting and watching for anything they can get!

A man coming down from the cave gave this one a coconut to munch on.

Does he look tired?  We just made it to the top… yippee!!

This is the view of KL from the top… yee haw!

For a small donation this man will smear some kind of ash on your forehead and say a prayer for you.

Another detail that is missing from that fine historical description is that once inside the Cathedral Cave there are a number of additional steps that one has to climb to see all of it.  These steps were more narrow and wet from the water dripping in the cave
By my estimate we must have climbed some 350-400 steps… at least, all told!  I thought I might die before I reached the top, but I made it with only 4-5 stops to rest.  I must also tell you that the heat and humidity was also a factor. 
After the first 100 steps, both Michael and I were dripping wet.  I was so glad that at the last second before we left the hotel I had run up to the room and borrowed a hand towel to take with us.  It was well used by the time we boarded the tour van again!

There were several prayer temples in the cave.  This is just another example.

More statues tucked away in a stone niche in the side of the cave.

These little prayer areas seem to be covered with just a little statue in a small space in the front of the area.

As you look up the cavern walls to the opening at the top, there are 100’s of monkeys.  They are everywhere!  Poor Michael sweats in the shower… this was killing him!  Doesn’t he look frazzled?

This is the view from the farthest point in the cave looking back at the entrance.  The pictures I have in this post of the various statues are just a small example of what is in this cavern.  I do not know much about the Hindu religion and have no knowledge of the various statues and their meanings.  Elephants seem to be important as there are a lot of them in this cave.

This has an elephant person on the left and people with many arms.

More statues…

It is time to start back down the 272 steps.  Thank goodness down is easier than up.

There were several Mommas’ with their babies on the steps going down.  They were so cute! I could have taken 100 shots of different monkeys because they were just all over, but Michael forced some restraint on me,

We made the descent much quicker than the climb and good thing… we were running out of time.  I stopped at the little store on the grounds for an icy cold bottle of water.  I was sure I had lost all the moisture in my body this morning.

I had wanted to see the other caves, but we just did not have the time.  That is certainly one of the draw backs to a tour.  They simply do not give you enough time to do all the looking you want to.  We will have to put this on the list for our next time in KL.  We will circle back on our own and visit the rest of the caves.

Caverns were the one thing that Mom loved to take us to when we were kids.  I remember going to Carlsbad Cavern in New Mexico and Texas caves such as Inner Space Cavern in Georgetown, Longhorn Cavern in Burnet, Natural Bridge Cavern in New Braunfels and Wonder Caves in San Marcos, just to name a few.  We have explored caves in the hill country and around my home town that do not even have names.

I have already told you about our last stop on this morning tour.  Once we left the Batik Factory we were taken back to the hotel and dropped off.  We made a quick stop at the room to try to freshen up a bit and then to the Pavilion for another round of a new cuisine in the basement. 

After lunch we walked a few blocks to the Convention Center to buy a ticket for the hop-on hop-off city tour.  The pick-up was right there also.  It started out bad and continued to degrade as the afternoon progressed.  We are waiting for the bus and I needed to go potty.  I asked the young women that we bought the tickets from when the next bus was to arrive… 10 minutes.  I left to go and as luck would have it there was a line.  I turned right around and left so we would not miss the bus… wrong!  The bus had come and gone in the less than 5 mins I had been gone.  The bad news meant a 30 min wait… the good news is I had plenty of time to go to the bathroom now! 

The next bus arrived and was packed.  Michael and I were sandwiched in and it was hot on the bus… miserable!  There are two French women behind us talking loudly the whole time and we could not hear the commentary that the bus driver was giving as we passed places of interest.  Given the fact we were tired and hot from our morning workout; the volume of the conversation behind us was like gnats swarming your ears.

Then to add insult to injury, the lady in the seat across from us decided she did not like the smell of the wipe she had used to clean her hands with. So she empties a little bottle of perfume in her hands and rubs her hands in it and wipes it on her clothes.  It was a sickly floral smell that made both of us nauseated.  Mixed with the sweat and other smells of a hot and crowded bus… ARG!

That was the last straw… thank goodness we were almost at the stop we wanted to get off at.  We wanted to check out the cool train station.  I would have gotten off to see a pile of trash at that point.  Both of us had had enough of the bus!

So off we walked to the train station.  And we walked … and we walked looking for how to get into the station… which turned out to be closed!  The trains do not run on Saturday… at least not by that time.  They were done for the day by the time we got there.  Things just were not going very well for us… but we got some nice pictures of the closed station.

That is the National Mosque in the background.  This would be the final picture of the day.  We caught the next bus and finished the ride around the rest of the stops till it came to the Convention Center again.  That was all we could stand.

We walked to the Pavilion which was on the way and stopped for dinner at Tony Roma’s.  Then went to the hotel for a nice shower and pack up… for tomorrow we leave for the airport at 6am. 

We were so spent from the caves that the rest of the day had been not so good for us.  I think we were overly ambitious in what we would be able to handle for the day.  We simply were not prepared for how much the steps up to the cave with the temperature and humidity would wipe us out.  Our head still thinks we are in our 20’s, but our body reminds us of just how old we are sometimes.  I remember my Mom saying something like that too.

I really enjoyed our time in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  In spite of the heat and humidity, it was wonderful.  I look forward to another opportunity to come here with Michael.  He says they are already asking when he can come back.  So anything I wanted to do and ran out of time… there will be a next time!