Kuala Lumpur, The City of Lights!!

Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, best known as "The Garden City of Lights", is the next destination.

This time I'm lucky to have a group. The enjoyment levels increased substantially.

Now coming to the travelogue, long weekend again, we all left to KL on Thursday night by different means and at different times. Myself and other person to reach the last, on Friday morning at around 8 AM.

As we had already planned the itenary, we headed to the Batu Caves after breakfast.

Batu Caves:  It is a limestone hill, which 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 or Batu River, which flows past the hill.

The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India, dedicated to Lord Murugan. It is the focal point of Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Malaysia.

The huge lime stone hill from outside.. 

The limestone forming Batu Caves is said to be around 400 million years old. (Source: Wiki)

It is a religious site and famous mainly due to the golden (coated) Murugan statue which is 140 ft (42.7m ) tall.

Jai Hanuman!

The caves also have a dark caves tour which takes about 40 mins. The waiting time was high. We could n't go as we were short of time.

The temple beside the caves..

The caves also offer a rock climbing for adventurers which need to be booked in advance. (For Details)

The Ramayana story inside caves..

The appealing statue of Lord Murugan :)

Lots of pigeons around :)

The combined view of stairs and the statue.. The stairs are around 270 and almost vertical.. But you can climb  them easily with few breaks.

The inside.. Few more steps to reach the main idol..

Just another view

The Neon lights made the caves radiant..

Entrance to the dark caves..

After the Batu Caves, Our next destination is Menara KL Tower. We were informed to visit on some other day, as the views were not clear due to the rain. So we decided to proceed to the Petronas twin towers for our slot (7 pm)

The Petronas Twin towers: These are the tallest twin towers of the world. Mind you I am saying only the twin towers not the tower.

Petronas held the record of the world's tallest sky scraper from 1998-2004 which is initially surpassed by Taipei 101 but now held by Burj Khalifa.

The Petronas Towers, 452m tall and held the record of World's tallest towers for about 6 years..

We have chosen the 7 pm slot after knowing that the sun set will be around that time. And we were lucky to see experience the beautiful sunset from the 42nd floor (the bridge connecting the two towers).

The perfect sunset from the twin tower's bridge.. It was just awesome!

Lights add to the beauty!

We were given 20 mins to stay there and then proceeded to the 82nd floor. The view of the city from the top is good but main thing is the feeling that you are in the top floor of one of the tallest buildings, is amazing.

The view of one tower fro the other..

View from Petronas..

The night view..

Prior to the entrance, we have got few day time pics of the towers and later got the spectacular views of the towers in the night.

Once we are satisfied with the pictures, we left the towers.

Chiling Waterfalls: On the second day, we have taken a ful day trip to Chiling waterfalls, which is about 60 kms north of Kuala Lumpur.

This is the best part of our trip.

We started around 8.30 am in the morning and first reached a Buddhist temple. There were some prayers going on, which we were told to that they are the offerings to the dead. This will happen once in a year for a span of few days, in which people chose to offer on one day.

Few of the 18 monks with various characteristics..

Some more.. the peaceful one is really peaceful to see..

Lord Buddha

The temple was so beautiful, calm and pleasant.

The beautiful Buddha statue.. But when we were there, we felt it was more peaceful and sacred than the beauty..

After the temple, we continued our journey to the falls with a break at Selangor Dam.

Selangor Dam: It has the record completion in 5 years and still serving the purpose!!

The reservoir..

The dam is 400 meters wide at its base, 800m long and 110m high. According to official records, the Sungai Selangor dam at full supply capacity covers 600 acres.

This one looked awesome directly.. Couldn't take better picture due to the mesh..

After having a short photo session at the dam, we moved to the waterfalls.

The entrance is just beside the main road where we parked out van and walked inside. Just after the admin building, comes the first river crossing but with a bridge. We took the bridge. After that the trekking started with the know sharing by our tour guide (as he feels :P)

The suspension bridge over the first river crossing..

After a short trek, we came across our first river crossing. The water is so cold and refreshing, we just forgot the hot sun and our tiredness. The depth is waist low but the stream is a bit faster, which made us feel a little difficulty.

The cool and refreshing river flowing along the jungle. 

Once we crossed the river, our excitement increased. We crossed the river 5 times.

One river crossing.. 

And we are at falls.. :)

The falls.. The first sight didn't make us to fall in love with as we have seen higher falls than this. But when we are into the pool around and when the water droplets splashing on us, it made us feel like "wowwww". Then we are were love with.. :)

The falls are not very high yet refreshing. We went into the pool near the falls. It was waist depth again. But dangerous where the falls are ending as few people drowned over there.

Once we are done with the falls, we went to a place suggested by our guide, for the body rafting.

Just while trekking..

The velocity of the flow was very high and we are asked to jump into the water and raft in the river!!!! As all of us are non swimmers, we were naturally afraid yet wanted to do. One by one, we gathered our courage and rafted, not once but thrice. :)

It was really fun. After the rafting, we had our lunch and hot tea provided by our guide.

Nipah alike.. 

Returned back in the same route but very confident. We were back in very less time. With the damp clothes, we traveled for an hour to reach the Ulu Kalong hot water spring.

The temperature is very high and been informed that all time min. is 41 degrees Celsius  We were reluctant to get into the pool but we managed to get inside with the help of our guide. It was an incomparable experience.  When we are out of the pool , we felt that no more body pains.

Couldn't capture a pic of the hot spring alone as i was more interested in going in :)

Once we are done with the hot spring, we started back to KL with a stop over for dinner.

We reached the Menara KL tower by 8 PM.


Menara KL tower: The tower is a tele-communication tower, famous for being the highest view point in KL, that is open to public.

The Menara KL Tower.. Top view from the bottom at the night.. Pic credits: Swakee Krishnan

The tower features an antenna that reaches 421 meters (1,381 feet). The roof of the pod is at 335 meters (1,099 feet). The rest of the tower below has a stairwell and an elevator to reach the upper area.

Though the building has 6 levels, visitors are only allowed in the bottom most level.

It offers spectacular views of both KL and the Petronas towers. After spending more than 1.5 hours enjoying the city of lights, we returned back.

Petronas, from Manera

Lighting by a pub.. Pic Credits: Avinash Chandra

Couldn't get any better!

On 3rd day, we were at leisure and did some shopping in KL Central Mall as it was near to our place. And with that, we are done with the tour and started back to Singapore.

Time Traveled: 28/03/13 to 31/03/13