Murugan at Batu Caves

3 years back when I was a working in Goldstone I used to get lot of forward mails. One such mail had pictures of the worlds tallest Murugan statue. It was simple superb. The idol was 42 meter height in golden color. At that time I didnt even know where it was located, but actually wanted to visit that place once. Finally after 3 years when I went to KL, I was able to visit the place. Before going to KL when I was searching for places to visit in KL, I came across Batu Caves. When I read about that caves and saw the picture of the same murugan statue, I was excited and immediately thought of going there.

Batu Caves

First I would write some facts about this place. Batu Caves is one of Malaysia's most famous tourist destinations especially for the colourful Thaipusam festival. This attracts up to 800,000 devotees and spectators; the highlight is seeing devotees in a trance carry kavadi, a metal frame attached to the body. The Murugan status is standing at 42.7 meter (140.09 ft) high, the world's tallest statue of Murugan, a Hindu deity, is located outside Batu Caves, near the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The statue, which cost approximately Rupees 24 million, is made of 1550 cubic metres of concrete, 250 tonnes of steel bars and 300 litres of gold paint brought in from neighboring Thailand.

Worlds Tallest Murugan Statue

When we went to KL the first place we visited after Petronas was Batu Caves. We took a taxi from Petronas to Batu Caves. It was located about 13km North of Kuala Lumpur city centre. Once we reached there Me and Srinivas were very much excited as we both just saw those pics online and never thought one day we would be there. We took some pics out side the caves with the Statue.

Entrance

First Steps

There were 272 steep steps to reach the caves. We started climbing the steps watching the beautiful caves. The flora and fauna of the region was also really beautiful.

On the way up

Monkey with another monkey

View from 272nd step

huh end of the steps

Finally we reached the caves. It was so beautiful. Once we entered the cave the ceiling was almost 100m from the ground. The cave consisted of the ornate Hindu Shrines.

Entrance of the cave

Hindu Shrines

Look at the tall ceiling

Temple

There is also a murugan temple inside. There are again about 50 steps which would take us to another temple.

View from the inner cave

We took many pictures of the cave, the temples and the monkeys seen around. On the way back we saw one more cave which was referred as the dark cave. This cave has some amazing rock formations and has different types of bats inside. We didnt really show interest in going there as it was like an educational tour and it would take more than an hour. We saw a guy with a python around his neck. We gave him 10 Ringgit and we (Me and Srinivas) tried the same.

Scared the shit out of him :P

There is one more cave which is an Art Gallery Cave located at the foot of the steps. Statues and wall paintings depicting Hindu deities and mythology are displayed here. The walk to the entrance is itself quite a pleasant experience through a lake and ponds filled with hundreds of colourful fish.

Colorful Fishes

We did not go in as we were not interested in that art and gallery and also we had very less time to finish off many things. We took pics of those colorful fishes and started back to KL Tower in the same taxi which was waiting for us.