India_2015- Bhatu Caves

GOODBYE INDIA AND HELLO MALAYSIA!!!

Straight outta Tirupati, we drove ourselves to the Chennai Airport, and flew out to Malaysia! Yea it was a fast escape to a far place. Juust kidding, our Uncle lives in Malaysia, so we made sure to visit him for a few days before we went back to U.S. 

The first place we visited was the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur. The Batu Caves is apparently the most popular Hindu shrine outside India. It's dedicated to Lord Murugan, and he's the God in the statute. According to Wikipedia, this Murugan statue is apparently the biggest in the world. 

These are idols of Lord Ganesha, who is the brother of Lord Murugan. These idols were on top of a temple situated next to the big statue. I like this picture because there's light shining from behind, making the idols look distinct or radiant.

Hah, climbing more steps to get to the top of caves! I counted the number of steps, but I don't remember exactly how many... but I think it was around 300 steps. This is the main entrance to the 400 million year old limestone caves. It's looks like a daredevil, "do you dare to enter", kind of entrance, right?

This is also another statue of Lord Murugan. This one is about as tall as a lamp post.  At this point, the area didn't smell too good, and the flooring was very slippery. They were cleaning up trash inside the caves, and the smell blew all the way to the entrance. And well the floors... there was water dripping from the top of the caves making the stone floors too slippery. They should've just put those yellow caution signs everywhere. 

 Macaques!!! There were so many of them around the caves, so it was really easy to get a good picture of them. Haha this one looks like it's in the middle of blinking, or it's half asleep. 

Guess what? Inside the caves, like way inside, up three flights of stairs, and in a small corner, lies a Shiva Lingam (Hindu God). And it's naturally formed, so people worship the figure and take it as a good sign. It's probably thousands of years old, so it's even gated and well protected.

In another part of the cave, the owners placed real sized figures from the scenes of Ramayanam (one of the greatest works of literature in India). This is the final scene where Seetha Devi and Lord Rama get married. And the scenes and figures just fit into all the nooks and crannies of the cave. I think this was the coolest part of the cave, because I've never seen a real-sized depiction of the Ramayanam. 

The Batu Caves were only 3-4 hours of our 4 day Malaysia trip, so stick around for more pictures of Malaysia!