KL day trip - Batu Caves

After breakfast at Holiday Inn Glenmarie, Sarah and I drove to Batu Caves.  This was Sarah's first visit here, a third for me.  

Lord Murugan stands guard at the Batu Caves

From Wikipedia

Batu Caves is a limestone hill that has a series of caves and cave temples in the Gombak district, 13 kilometres (8 mi) north of  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It takes its name from the Sungai Batu (Batu River), which flows past the hill. Batu Caves is also the name of the nearby village.  The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India, and is dedicated to Lord Murugan. It is the focal point of Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Malaysia.

Guarding the Batu Caves is an imposing 42.7 m (140 ft) structure of Lord Murugan.  To reach the Temple Cave behind him, one needs to climb 272 steps.  I didn't bring the big camera, I thought Sarah will ask me to carry her halfway up.  But she impressed me when she did it all by herself!  We passed by several macaque monkeys on the way which scared Sarah a little.  Be careful with your things, these monkeys snatches food from passers by.

Once we reached the top, we explored the  cave and the temple.  Sarah was busy looking for more monkeys and chasing the few chickens around.   Half an hour later, we were on our way down.  She did ask me to carry her going down, about a quarter left to go.

She was more interested to chase and feed the pigeons.  Took a while before we started climbing the stairs. 

Lord Murugan's golden statue.

Coloful temple pillars.

Up we go.

The journey at the 272 steps.

These mother and child macaque monkeys didn't budge at all, they're so used to people. 

We reached the top!  There were some construction going on one side.

Up close and personal with the limestone wall.

There's another temple up the stairs.

This temple is called Valli Devanai.

There's an open ceiling in this part of the cave.

Limestone formations highlighted by warm hued spot lights.

Sarah wanted to pray in the temple. 

She asked me to take her photo with this stone baby elephant.

On our way down.  It was quite hazy that day, we didn't see the Petronas Towers in the distance.

Water break as we went down.