Batu Caves is one of Malaysia’s most famous tourist destinations. Every year hundreds of thousands of Hindu devotees congregate here for the colourful Thaipusam festival.
The first cave temple was established in 1891, and wooden steps up to the Temple Cave were built in 1920. Of the various cave temples that comprise the site, the largest and best known is the Temple or Cathedral Cave, so named because it houses several Hindu shrines beneath its 100 m vaulted ceiling. To reach it one has to climb 272 steps, a feat performed by many Hindus on the way to the caves to offer prayers to their revered deities. Close to Kuala Lumpur are the Batu Caves. The Batu Caves is a temples where they held a very important festival called “Thaipusam” and every year it is very crowed and people from all places comes to visit and you can also see many tourist here. The other main cave is the 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.
The 2.5 million statue has of course entered the Malaysian Book of Records as the tallest statue of a Hindu deity in the country. Lord Murugan, one of the divine powers in the Hindu pantheon of gods is worshipped by more than one million devotees around the world.
Some devotees pierce their tongues with skewers and carry a garlanded wooden arch across their shoulders, while others carry a kavadi (semi circular metal structure decorated with peacock feathers, flowers and palm leaves) walking in procession between the two temples.