Ow

I get a text message from Lewis asking me if I had decided what to do tomorrow (a public holiday), and I have absolutely no idea what he's on about. Ah, yes, I had provisionally agreed to go to the Batu Caves with him to see the Thaipusam festival, but as this agreement was made over a load of alcohol on Friday night, I had promptly forgotten.

We arrange to meet for breakfast at mine at about 9.30 am, which is perfect, and then almost immediately get a message to say that we had better leave really early – i.e. 8 am, which is not so perfect! Still I am determined to see this festival so I guess I will have to get out of bed early on a holiday…

Of course, I didn’t bother going to bed particularly early so I am knackered when the alarm goes off

Thaipusam’s an Indian festival where people who have committed sins in the previous year pay their penance by abstaining for 48 days, then attach, via hooks into bare skin, heavy objects to or a carriage / person that they drag along from the Sri Mahamariamman Temple in Chinatown to the Batu Caves (about 7-8 km). If you hadn’t got something attached to your body then you were probably carrying something heavy on your head. It was going to be a site to see!

Anyway the first taxi that we booked then phoned and said they didn’t want to take us there, so I very nearly gave up, but instead Lewis managed to secure a car that we could hire for the time we were going to be there, which was a good thing. So Moo, our cab driver, picks me up at my place at about 8 am and off we head to the Batu Caves. From what all the people in the office had been saying, plus the fact the original taxi driver had refused to take us, I was expecting carnage, and had worn walking shoes expecting to have to abandon our taxi and walk several kilometres to get there. As usual, it was a complete exaggeration and we managed to get almost to the front line of the procession without any issue.

I must remember in future to either ignore these warnings of woe, or actually ask if they have got personal experiences to pull from: as it happens, most of those who said that I shouldn’t go there as it’ll be too crowded / dangerous / smelly have, in fact, never been.

It was amazing: we managed to get a pretty good spot just outside the main gates to the Caves and were able to watch the various spectacles pass us by: these consisted of men and women carrying either

•  a body suit of some wooden / polystyrene construction with a deity sitting on top of them, festooned with peacock feathers
• heavy looking milk churns on the head
• wooden spoons pierced through cheekbones
•  fruit / milk churns / ropes tied to other men/trolleys hooked into their backs

I spent the whole time going “Ow”