Indian businesses and services in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Brickfields, right beside KL Sentral, is the neighbourhood most people mean by Kuala Lumpur's Little India. Jalan Tun Sambanthan is lined with sari and jewellery shops, garland stalls, banana-leaf restaurants and sweet shops, and it is an easy walk from the city's main rail hub. The older Indian shopping district around Jalan Masjid India, near Masjid Jamek LRT station, is the other main area, busier with textiles and bazaar trading and especially crowded in the run-up to Deepavali and Hari Raya.

Malaysian Indians are long-established citizens, mostly of Tamil descent, with Malayali, Telugu, Punjabi and Sri Lankan Tamil communities as well, and their presence is woven into everyday life in the capital. The Sri Mahamariamman Temple on Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, in Chinatown, is the city's oldest Hindu temple; Brickfields has several temples of its own, and there are gurdwaras and Indian Muslim mosques in the city centre.

Thaipusam is a major occasion. A silver chariot leaves the Sri Mahamariamman Temple and travels through the night to Batu Caves, north of the city, where huge crowds of devotees and visitors climb the long staircase to the cave temple beneath the giant golden statue of Lord Murugan. Batu Caves has its own KTM Komuter station, the practical way to go on festival days. Deepavali is a public holiday across most of Malaysia, with open houses and bazaars in Brickfields and Masjid India; Thaipusam itself falls in the Tamil month of Thai, which means January or February, on a date that changes every year.