Batu Caves Blessings

Massive Hindu God in gold, and stairs to entrance of Batu Caves on the left

If you’ve been to Malaysia (you’ve probably been to Batu Caves. It’s somewhere I never got to, when I was here last. It’s only about 45 minutes out of KL traffic, just on the outskirts of the city, which is what makes it all the more interesting, geologically speaking. In fact, you can take the LRT – the metro –  there. (Interesting fact: The LRT, by the way, is made by Bombardier).

As you drive out of KL, you see this massive rock structure jutting up and towering over everything, literally on the side of the road. In front of it is a massive Hindu God in gold. The Batu Caves are a sacred temple for followers of the Hindu religion, therefore all things here are sacred. A good thing, as it is much less commercial. Sure there are pockets of stores and food stalls on the road before the entrance, but as you climb the stairs – all 272 of them according to Jordan – the only things that greet you are a couple of tiny blessing areas (for lack of a better term) and masses of monkeys roaming around freely. Supercute kid monkeys, tired-looking nursing mother monkeys and grumpy, scowling I-think-I’m-in-charge male monkeys. A bit like the world of humans, really. For the blessing area, you make a donation and are blessed, hands waved above your head and a red dot put on your forehead. All three kids were happy to donate and get dotted.

Beginning the great staircase up



Halfway there...



Monkey Mama




Inside the cave...and more stairs!



We climbed the steps in the morning heat, which was not nearly as bad as we thought, and the kids were thrilled at all the monkeys hanging around amongst us as we climbed. At the top was the massive mouth of the caves, with lots of swallows and the occasional bat swooping everywhere, although the focus of these caves is not bats, as I had mistakenly thought it was. The carving out of the inside of this massive cave is just incredible, gouged out by water over centuries, with stalactites and stalagmites still perfectly intact. It was obvious that no matter what, we humans were visitors and this was Mother Earth. I loved this about the Batu Caves. It is hard to describe the size of the cavity you are in, or how serene it is...and even the photos don’t really do it justice. But hats off to Malaysian capitalism not destroying it for tower triplets or another shopping centre or something.

We popped into a few shops for a tiny wooden elephant (for Taz), a few more postcards,  juices and ice creams and also a dozen fresh hot potato curry puffs to bring home for lunch. Our driver, Alam, was there promptly at 12:30 to bring us back home. I’m quite getting into the driver thing, despite enjoying my escapades driving here. I think I am going to ask Santa Claus this year for an Alam...oh, and a Jatmi too. Off we zoomed back to No. 10 for our curry puff lunch. We then grabbed our swim suits and towels, a book to read and off we went to the club. There was hardly anyone there, again, and the kids had a blast going head first down the twisty slides; Ali caught some good shots. After multiple slides, we ordered satay, springrolls and garlic bread snacks, and I read a few more pages of Roald Dahl’s About a Boy (what a fascinating life he had). The heavens then opened up with a massive thunderstorm just as Alam picked us up at 4pm – perfect timing. We swung by yet another grocery store for food for dinner as Eb was joining us again tonight. By this stage of the holiday game, our kids were asking for “anything but rice and chicken” so we got some chorizo to barbecue, with spuds, broccoli and sugar snap peas. Ali got it all ready while I finished making my knitted tiger (yeah! I finally finished it on time!) that’s a gift for cousin Sarah (Ali’s younger brother’s daughter). Hopefully she is into knitted green-and-white tigers! Eb showed up almost ahead of schedule, and we had a great dinner and chat about his business prospects (all very exciting and mysterious). The kids stayed up quite late writing in their journals (we are trying to prepare them for the brutal 12-hour time change when we get home) and Eb asked for multiple hugs from all of us. And then asked for one last set of hugs again as he walked out the door. We sadly waved goodbye.