North of KL - waterfalls and Batu Caves

I'm finally organizing all my photos and getting them uploaded, so here are a few more.
One day I took a tour to just outside of Kuala Lumpur to see the Batu Caves, where a large hindu temple and shrine are built at the foot of some caves.
Here is the approach:

And closer,
The giant gold statue is of the Hindu lord Murugan and is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside of India (says Wikipedia). It was actually built quite recently, finished in 2006 but the temple on the ground was built in 1890 by an Indian trader.
and a shot of the entrance to the caves and all the steps--272 to be exact (they were numbered)
Here is an older statue of Murugan the trader built inside the entrance to the cave.

Here is a shot looking almost directly straight up inside the entrance to the caves. It was quite large. The native peoples of the region, the Temuan, apparently used them as shelters and they currently house a series of many different hindu shrines on the ground, and in the various caves. And another shot of inside looking up - I kind of liked this view the best - there were small waterfalls and birds flying around and green growth to enjoy - the floor of the caves was sticky with spilled soda, full of tourists and monkeys. You can see how a location like this would inspire religious devotion.

Here's a good photo I stole from the internet that shows the inside of the cave better - I like this angle - it gets a lot more into the frame than I ever could standing on the floor.
Outside the caves, there are more shrines and also this huge statue of Hanuman....I don't know exactly, but it was off to the side - I ~think~ this was a moveable float like the Hindis are so fond of for feast days. It was probably 25 feet tall - I would LOVE to see it moving with a huge crowd of people surrounding it!
Coming down the stairs looking at the top of the entryway - so many intricate carved and painted scenes and figures!....
Here is one of the walls inside the temple. The large Thaipusam festival held in late January/early Feb. occurs here. The procession begins in Kuala Lumpur and lasts eight hours on the way to the caves where they give offerings of milk to Murugan.
There were lots of monkeys, of course, and they were quite aggressive and fighting each other for tourist junk food. This was a good shot of one--he was only about a foot away from me and reached out to touch me after I took this photo.
Nearby the caves, there was also a nice nature park with a series of watefalls, called Tembler park. There were also monkeys here! Yay monkeys! This one was licking a potato chip bag. Probably not great for their evolutionary development.....
This is a pretty big lizard on the tree trunk, but it was difficult with the lighting to get a very good photo:
And here's the first pool of the series that was a bit more developed and had lots of people swimming:
The other person on my tour and I walked just a few hundred meters up the trail and it quickly became much quieter and nicer. It was SUPER hot and humid (it IS the jungle, I guess.....) and the trail was very steep.
Here we are after our little walk-through. He was a very interesting guy - American, surfer, currently owns a clothing design company and restaurant in Guangzho China. He was on a winter surf holiday through Indonesia and just passing through Kuala lumpur. Never got his contact information, so possible I won't ever cross paths again!