The Sultan’s Mosque

Blank faces stared at us. Strange. We were on the way to one of the supposedly most beautiful mosques in Malaysia, and nobody in the bus seemed to know what we are talking about. Maybe it was our pronunciation of the name, or maybe just the fact that not a lot of tourists find their way here. For a moment we almost doubted our plan to go to this ominous mosque, but then we just got on the bus that we thought will go to the mosque and hoped for the best.

For more than an hour, the bus made its way through lots of Malay villages, picking up schoolchildren, grandmas, women with burkas, others with saris, western looking Malays – it was a colourful ride. Along the highways in between there were the all too familiar palm oil plantations, that dominate the Malaysian countryside seemingly whatever direction you turn. Finally, we arrived in Kuala Kangsar – the royal city of the Sultan of Perak. Perak is one of the nine states in Malaysia that are hereditary monarchies, the other four states that don’t have a sultan have a governor. Interestingly, every five years these sultans together with the governors choose in the conference of rulers among themselves the head of state, aka the King of Malaysia. This makes him one of the few monarchs in the world who is elected. The newest king is at the same time the oldest – Sultan Abdul Halim of Kedah ascended the throne just a month ago at the age of 83. But he knows the ropes, as he was elected as king once before when he was 40.

But back to the Sultan of Perak. His ancestors built huge palaces in Kuala Kangsar, and also the beautiful Ubudiah mosque. Despite all those magnificent buildings, this city somehow managed to stay off the tourist radar. It’s not easy to escape from the tourist crowds that populate so many places in Malaysia, but when we got off the bus in Kuala Kangsar’s bus terminal, we stepped into a town where we seemed to be the only ‚ghosts‘ (Western tourists), and the locals were without exception extremely friendly and welcoming to us. After a short walk we finally saw the the mosque. Behind average grey village houses, the golden domes were rising into the sky. In a sense, this sight was more impressive than seeing a famed building like the Sydney Opera house – because you have seen it on pictures a thousand times before, and seeing it for real is kind of just confirming (or somewhat re-adjusting) the picture you already had in your mind. But this was new, it felt somehow undiscovered, and it made us feel good about coming here, to this place that nobody else seemed to know.

When we got to the entrance of the mosque, we bumped into a local hanging around in the gardens. We shyly asked whether it would be possible to enter, and he immediately took us inside and proudly showed us around. I obviously couldn’t enter the men’s section, so I sat quietly in the corner of the women’s section, wrapped in a tent-like cloak and just soaking up the atmosphere. Just as I wanted to get up leave, two girls came in. They threw white cloaks over their street dress, and put on white headscarfs. Then they started praying. I haven’t seen many Muslim women pray before, usually only men, and I was quite fascinated. The two women stood and kneeled in synchronous movements, entirely covered in the white cloth, and everything happened in completele silence. Even the rustling of their clothes was absorbed by the thick carpet in the prayer room. Then the girls disappeared again. I stepped out of the mosque having goosebumps. I guess there is nothing too special about two Muslim women praying, yet it felt like such a serene moment to watch.

And it all started with a postcard that we randomly spotted somewhere in Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur. It featured a beautiful mosque, and when we read on the back the first time about Ubudiah mosque, the thought was born that we should go there. And it was definitely worth a detour.