Happy Thaipusam from Kuala Lumpur!
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
2nd February 2007
After 3 days gentle introduction to life in South East Asia, courtesy of the clean, safe, orderly, and surprisingly good (if lacking a little ‘je ne sais quois’) Singapore, we headed north by train Kuala Lumpur, capital city of Malaysia.
For once our timing was spot on, we had arrived in town just in time for the Thaipusam festival. Thaipusam is a Hindu festival celebrated on the full moon of the Tamil month of Thai (a.k.a. 1st Feb this year!).
On the day of the festival, devotees shave their heads and undertake a pilgrimage along a set route while engaging in various acts of devotion. At its simplest (and least painful!) this may entail carrying a pot of milk, but the hard core Hindus get into acts of self mutilation, by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers (ouch!). The most spectacular practice is the ‘vel kavadi’, essentially a portable altar up to two meters tall, decorated with peacock feathers and attached to the devotee through 100 hooks pierced into the skin on the chest and back! It is said that the devotees are able to enter a trance, feel no pain, do not bleed from their wounds and have no scars left behind (reah right!).
It so happens that the largest celebration of this festival takes place in Kuala Lumpur, with the pilgrimage following the 14km route from the city centre to the spectacular Batu Caves. The festival attracts up to 1m worshipers (and a fair handful of tourists!).
We set out early in the morning by bus to the caves, our devotion clearly not strong enough to walk the 14kms! When we arrived the festival was in full swing, with hundreds of thousands of people making their way up the 272 steps to the caves, past the 43m high gold statue of Lord Murugan (the Hindu version of the angel of the north, but a little less rusty!).
It was a spectacular sight (check out some of the photos, arghh!) and we spent the whole morning soaking up the atmosphere. We made one attempt to join the worshipers going up to the caves but beat a hasty retreat as the crowds became over bearing. It was full on enough just watching the goings on, the devotion of the worshipers to walk all the way from town, in the heat of the day, either carrying heavy pots or impersonating kebabs is unbelievable (I’m glad that celebrating Christian festivals involves nothing more painful than eating too much chocolate!).
After the fun and games at the festival, we headed to the other side of the city to visit another sacred site…..the Bukit Jalil national sports stadium….the venue for the 1998 commonwealth games!
Charlotte competed at the games 8 years ago, so we went up to have a look around the venues for old times sake! We managed to get into the swimming pool complex to have a look around, although Charlotte declined my challenge of doggy paddle a race! It was great to see the place where Charlotte had raced, having previously only seen it on the TV!
The next day we headed up to the Petronas twin towers, in the heart of the business district of the city. We joined in with the other tourists and went up to the viewing bridge between the towers at level 42! The buildings are incredible, once the tallest skyscrapers in the world at 452m, they now hold the slightly less glamorous title of the tallest twin towers in the world. With a taste for tall buildings we then headed over to the sky tower, for another aerial view of the city (I have to thank Charlotte for indulging my weird obsession with tall buildings…but it was the eve of my birthday!).
On our final evening in KL, we headed out for a celebratory meal, stumbling across a great little restaurant for our first decent curry since leaving Leeds (the things you miss about home eh!). We both enjoyed our brief visit to Kuala Lumpur, the experience of the Thaipusam festival being one of the highlights of our trip so far!
Chris and Charl