After 272 steps ....
A monk standing among the silhouette of gods ....
Fortunately only a handful of people come early to Batu Caves
otherwise this would have been a busy short stair-case into the inner cave ...
otherwise this would have been a busy short stair-case into the inner cave ...
Batu Caves receives most attention during the Thaipusam festival,
which celebrates two important events for the Hindus
which are the birthday of the Hindu Lord Murugan
which are the birthday of the Hindu Lord Murugan
(the son of the god Siva and his wife Parvati)
and
Lord Murugan’s defeat of the demon Soorapadman with the aid of a
and
Lord Murugan’s defeat of the demon Soorapadman with the aid of a
powerful lance given to him by his mother.
In the 1860s, the caves are frequented by the Chinese community
to collect guano from bat droppings for their vegetable farms around Kuala Lumpur.
Batu Caves first came to public attention in 1878 when an American naturalist and conservationist
William Hornaday followed the smell of guano (excrement or feces/urines of bats)
up a jungle track, and
saw the huge natural limestone caves he described in his journals as
“perfectly resembling St Peter’s in Rome” ...
The area consists of three main caves and a number of smaller ones.
The caves are made of limestone and with a length 100 meters high and 400 meters long .
Shortly after Hornaday’s expedition, the site became a favourite among
Hindu devotees, who set up a shrine to Lord Murugan.
As Hornaday pointed out over 100 years ago, there are few words
that adequately describe this shrine in the sky: “stunning” and “gorgeous” ...
