***DISCLAIMER: THE BATU CAVES ARE CURRENTLY FREE TO VISIT***
DO NOT pay anyone an ‘entrance free’ to the actual Batu Caves! The Caves next door have a small entry fee. There are lots of people at the entrance and nearby trying to sell tourists tickets.
The Batu Caves are a MUST VISIT if you are ever in Kuala Lumpur for more than 10 hours (For other must-see KL sights, click here!). When I was in KL, this was the one thing that we had every intention of seeing! The Batu Caves are situated about 15km from the centre of Kuala Lumpur city, in a suburb called Gombak.
To get here, simply catch the train that goes to Gombak, walk outside the station and it is right there for you! The train probably takes around 20-40 minutes from KL Sentral Station depending on how many stops it actually stops for and how long it stops for-so plan accordingly!
(HOT TIP: Getting yourself to KL Sentral Train Station. From here, find platform 3 and the rest is clearly signposted in English!)
When you first get out of the train station and begin walking towards the caves, you see a huge cliff in front of you. To the left, is a cave with a large blue statue out the front, to the right is a curve which leads you around to the climb to begin going to the “Batu Caves”.
We decided to go to the left first and explore these caves, you have to pay 5MYR to get in (about $1.28USD)-BUT IT IS TOTALLY WORTH IT!
When you get inside the caves, there are numerous god statues in strange and interesting poses as well as an opportunity to walk through the caves and explore all the way up to higher levels of the cave inside.
When we came out of these first caves, we went around the corner and made our way over to the base of the stairs. What I was not prepared for is the amount of pesky monkeys everywhere! Be especially careful with these monkeys, they are very used to humans and will attempt to steal anything and everything (particularly food!) from you! So keep those bags zipped and don’t take anything out you don’t want stolen!
When we got to the base of the stairs, I remember staring and those 272 stairs and thinking “Isn’t there a chairlift or something up there?” So I began to climb (after a few photos of course! What I hadn’t realised prior to being at the entrance to the caves was that the temples inside were being total renovated by local groups. For this reason, when we were there, they were asking us to take up buckets of bricks to the people working at the top of the caves.
This pilgrimage up to the caves is undertaken as a spiritual journey for many every year, for locals and those from further afield. Many people do not wear shoes on the trek up to the caves and begin their worshiping practices in the caves themselves and the temples within the caves.
So safe walking, and make sure you take those climbing shoes!
Happy Travels!
Have you been to the Batu Caves?
Great to know about this attraction in Kuala Lumpur! I live in Singapore and oftentimes when I visit Malaysia with my family, it seems to be more of a shopping spree than anything else. I’ll definitely include this cultural site in my itinerary when I visit KL next time.
Thanks for reading! KL is definitely good for its shopping though!
This is a good guide for first timers to Batu Cave. Often tourist cannot figure out how to reach Batu Caves and this post will really help them. We loved visiting Batu Caves. Hope you also had fun there 🙂
Thanks for your feedback 🙂 yeah, I think it could’ve very confusing if you’re not at KL Sentral. I’m glad you loved it! I would love to see some photos if you have some on your site?