Somewhere In The Crowd There's You

The Thaipusam festival was absolutely amazing – and incredibly busy. Having stayed pretty much in the same spot for a while, letting the colourful crowds pass by, we decided to move into the throng and join the procession into the caves, as to come here and not actually go up into the caves would have been a bit pointless and I am sure we’d have regretted it. 

We made our way through the entrance and I am sure if I just jumped up, the crowds of people pushing and jostling to get to the caves would have carried me along. It didn’t help that the Malaysian Prime Minister was also here, so the crowds were there to see him too. Anyway, getting past the crowds gathering in front of him wasn’t too bad and it seemed to get clearer, so we marched our way to the entrance…

…only to find that we’d gone down a dead end and we couldn’t actually get to the entrance to the caves from where we were, as we were blocked by a set of railings that probably stretched all the way back to the entrance, so the only way to get into the caves was to make our way back against all the crowds to rejoin the correct line! Bollocks!

That was not fun, and I did suddenly feel rather claustrophobic in the crowd, but it wasn’t long before we’d managed to work our way back to where the railings started, and into the correct crowd, and up the 200 odd steps to the caves. 

Once up inside, which absolutely stank as predicted, we took a rest, a few photos of the crowds below and then made our way back down again: it was hot and smelly and, though an amazing site and experience, I’d had enough and I was worried that having spent so much time in the sun, I’d look like a Chinese lantern. 

I did joke that in about 10 years’ time, there would be an escalator up to the caves, and in fact after we'd come down later, there was an unveiling of a contract to build a cable car!