Batu Cave templess, Sentul, Kuala Lumpur

Batu caves, located just outside Kuala Lumpur town, is a nice destination to visit. It has couple of temples inside a cave, a pond, a statue, couple of Indian restaurants and shops. Can be covered in about 2 hours from KL Sentral if on tight schedule and can be half day program if done in leisure.

Batu caves area has two big statues- a smaller one of Lord Hanuman and a larger one of Lord Murugan. Murugan statue is 42.7 meters high and is said to be highest murugan statue in the world. Statue is made of concrete, steel and gold paint, costing 2.4 crore rupees INR.

Temple complex is managed by people of Indian origin, mainly people from Tamil Nadu. If you know Tamil, you can get around easily in this place.

About 100 odd steps takes tourists to the cave, which houses few more temples. View the pictures below to get an idea of what to expect. Refer Wikipedia for knowing more about historical details of Batu caves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batu_Caves

To me Vizag’s Bora Caves were more exciting. But Batu caves is still good. Nice Indian food and tender coconut is available around the place.

How to go to Batu caves?

Since internet literature had warned us about Kuala Lumpur city taxies for their tourist fleecing manners, we used trains. From our hotel we took monorail to KL Sentral. Our hotel staff had told us that we can take another train from KL Sentral to Batu caves. At KL Sentral when we asked couple of individuals as to how we can go to Batu caves, all suggested we hire a taxi.

Then I went to ticket counter of Monorail and asked the counter staff for help. He guided us in the right direction and confirmed that we can take a train. We headed in the direction, couple subsequent enquiries again resulted in everyone recommending cabs. We went further, found another ticket counter- this counter issues train tickets to go to KLIA or LCCT. This counter staff guided us in right direction, where we could buy tickets to Batu caves. We had to take the train called Kommuter. At the ticket counter when I said Batu caves, the lady gave tickets which mentioned Sentul and took one ringgit per ticket. We then identified right platform and waited for the train to come. A display suggested ETA of 0958 hours, but no train came at 9.58 AM Then the display changed to 1013 hours. Finally at about 10.11  a train arrived, we got in and realized that Batu caves is the last stop. In about 30 minutes we reached Batu caves, after stopping at about 7 stations in between.

At Batu caves the ticket card let us through, though it was couple of stations beyond Sentul. Batu caves is walkable from railway station. By 12 noon we were back in railway station to buy ticket- this time the ticket costed 2 ringgit each. So the visit costed us a total of 24 ringgit from hotel to hotel for 3 people (7.5 ringgit one way from Chow Kit to KL Sental for 3 people, 9 ringgit from KL Sental to Batu caves and back)

How much does taxi to Batu caves cost?

In KL Sentral prepaid taxi counter we asked about cost to Batu caves- we got a quote of 25 ringgit. From hotel it could have costed about 100 rinngit, as per hotel staff’s estimation.

There was no entry fee/camera fee etc to visit Batu caves.

Tender coconut being sold at RM3 was nice. They way they would cut it was different from India.

Points to take home: Do not blindly trust people when they say take taxi. It helps to study public transport options and check with railway or bus counter staff for specific questions about bus and trains.

Some more photos below:

Also see: Aquaria KLCC * Rice Plate project * Bora Caves, Vizag, AP *