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Date: 1/1/2009
Place: Malasia, Kuala Lumpur
Every year, more than a million devotees gather at the Batu Caves - a spectacular site outside Kuala Lumpur - to celebrate the Hindu festival of Thaipusam.
Thaipusam commemorates the day when the Goddess Parvathi gave her son Murugan an invincible vel (lance), with which he vanquished the evil asura (demons). The festival starts with a procession through the town. A silver chariot carries the image of Lord Subramaniam, Shiva's youngest son, and people throw coconuts on the ground beside it.
The devotees then head for the Batu Caves, which are both a Hindu pilgrimage site and one of Malaysia's great natural wonders, with three main caves and hundreds of smaller ones. The Temple Cave, which contains shrines to the Hindu gods, has a vaulted ceiling 100 metres high. Below it is the Dark Cave - a two-kilometre (1.2 miles) network of caverns containing a large number of cave animals, including species found nowhere else in the world. (It's impossible to enter the Dark Caves without permission from the Malaysian Nature Society, and there are strict rules governing visiting times.) There is also an "Art Gallery Cave" containing statues and wall paintings depicting Hindu mythology.
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