Rock Climbing - Kuala Lupur

I had been looking forward to doing some rock climbing for a while as there is some great limestone climbing in Malaysia. I was happy to find out that there was a ton of climbing basically right in Kuala Lumpur at this place called Batu Caves.

The Batu Caves are home to the world's largest Hindu shrine outside of India and it was quite an impressive sight. Coming up to the main cave we were greeted with a massive statue of some Hindu god, I was too lazy to ask which one, but this was truly a massive statue. Just past that is 273 steps up to the cave itself. It was fun walking up as there were monkeys all doing funny stuff like stealing people's food. But it was annoying as well as there was this automated recording advertising a thirty minute guided cave tour and it never stopped. It just repeated: "Thirty - minute - guided - cave - tour," over and over again. That thirty minute guided cave tour recording is permanently etched into my brain. Once we were leaving they couldn't have paid me to take a thirty minute guided cave tour. All day after that if I ever let my mind be still for an instant I would hear, "thirty - minute - guided - cave - tour," echoing in my mind. But aside from that the shrine was quite interesting to see. Coming out of the cave at the top of the stairs there is a fantastic view of the Kuala Lumpur skyline.

After seeing Batu Caves we walked and asked around for the rock climbing, which was apparently right near the cave. We ended up taking a cab to the other side of the limestone mountain and were dropped off at some random place near where the cliffs looked good. We got some directions from some nice men who were burning garbage and soon found some climbing.

There were tons of routes and at the end of the day we found the main site, which had many local climbers all over it. The highlight there was watching this tiny girl lead climbing this huge wall in bare feet with her hijab on, she couldn't have been more than 11 years old. It was a great site so we returned the following day.

I had one close call where a large rock fell down while Nick was climbing above me. He shouted out and I had time to jump out of the way as the rock flew past and smashed onto this metal platform I was standing on before tumbling down another fifty feet to the ground below. The rock was a lot bigger than this when it first fell, but even its size shown above would have left me with quite a scar, and by scar I mean dead. It was actually and exciting experience as no one was hurt. Nick hung onto the cliff and i got out of the way :)