Lord Murunga and the Macaques

Our first venture to a local tourist attraction was the Batu Caves, which is tauted as one of the top 10 attractions in KL. It is a massive limestone outcrop that has become a Hindu shrine.

At the base of the entrance beautifully handmade flower garlands are sold for those who want to present them as offerings. Sometimes un-informed tourists purchase them and wear them as leis. Not the intended use, but they are pretty non-the-less.

The most prominent feature is the forty-three meter gilded statue of Lord Murugan. He looks as though he is standing guard over the entrance and the 272 stairs that lead to the Temple Cave.

 

Apparently the giant gold guard isn't enough to keep away the masses of macaques (monkeys) that dangle from scaffolding, scale the limestone walls, climb up and down the stairs/railings, and steal food and drinks out of unsuspecting tourists' hands and bags.

 

Notice the baby hanging underneath the monkey on all fours.

Those cheeky monkeys are aggressive and we watched one snatch food out of someone's handbag then fight to see who was going to eat the prize. We only had to be there for a matter of minutes before Ashleigh decided she wanted nothing to do with the monkeys and we had to weave our way up the stairs in order to avoid being anywhere near one. 

  

 

The stairs are steep, the air is hot, and unfortunately, it's not well maintained. It was hard to ignore the monkeys, the pigeons and their droppings, and the mounds of trash. 

 

Once you reach the top of the stairs, the cave opens up and there are wires, lights, mini temples, and stalls selling trinkets, t-shirts and drinks. Not really the holy shrine we were envisioning.

The cave itself is really quite amazing and beautiful. At the top of the next set of stairs is another shrine and a skylight opening in the cave. Much nicer without the artificial lights and hawker stalls.

  

 

There are other attractions like the Dark Cave, which is a more traditional cave experience, but crawling through a dark wet cave didn't interest us. I'm pretty sure there is another place to hold a defanged cobra, but we passed on that too.

 

 

Some of the areas had been recently repainted and were brightly colored and interesting. However, there are no written explanations so we couldn't appreciate the significance of what we were looking at.

Our afternoon was a combo of local culture and a little exercise. Looking forward to seeing some of the other KL highlights.
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