CRADLE OF CALM

Ipoh, a sleepy town in Malaysia, offers the perfect setting for a rejuvenating holiday with its limestone karst mountains, cave temples, and hot springs.

- KHURSHEED DINSHAW

WHILE I SOAKED IN the geothermal water of my private outdoor hot spring whirlpool at the garden villa of The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat in Ipoh in Malaysia, I felt relaxed. The warm water with its rich mineral content eased my body of aches and pains. Calcium in the water strengthened my bones, iron aided the immune system and reduced fatigue, chloride maintained suitable pH levels, potassium helped normalise my heart rhythm, and magnesium reduced my high blood pressure.

Rejuvenated, I set out to explore one of the many natural caves of Ipoh. The first one was special. Experts believe that it was a former temple founded by a priest of Nichiren Shu, a Japanese Buddhist school dating back over 750 years. The inscriptions here are in the Japanese writing system called kanji, which uses Chinese characters. On the way to the cave, we passed a number of limestone hills that were partly hidden by lush trees growing around them. Each of these caves are the living heritage of Malaysia.

The first limestone cave temple we stopped by was the revered Kek Lok Tong Cave Temple. Meaning “the cave of great happiness”, it is spread across 12 acres. Though the cave was used for worship in the 1920s, it was not very popular due to its discreet entrance. Sometime in the 1960s, as part of an iron mining project, the entrance was enlarged for lorries ferrying iron ore through the cave. Inside the cave, a bronze statue of Buddha is seated on a lotus flower with 108 petals. It is flanked by Manjushri Bodhisattva and Samantabhadra Bodhisattva statues. I spent some time soaking in the tranquil vibe of the temple whose myriad rock formations are complimented by numerous stalactites and stalagmites.