Sunday, October 2, 2011

Angkor Wat: A Treasure Never Lost

Thursday, September 29, 2011


Angkor Wat is vast. No other word can describe it. The scale of the moat surrounding it, the temple's outer walls, the long entrance causeway that was used only by Khmer kings, and finally, the temple and its five towers, is unimaginable. Unlike the other places we've visited, Angkor Wat was never abandoned, even as the empire fell. Buddhist monks have lived there continuously, keeping the rain forest at bay, and bringing thousands of stone Buddhas with them. Many of these latecomers have made a more recent journey to the Angkor Museum's Gallery of One Thousand Buddhas.


Every visitor to Siem Reap gets up in the dark at least one day to watch the sunrise. When it was our turn, Long, our leader, took us off to the side, through a smaller entrance reserved for the King's family, where the sunrise was more dramatic and less crowded than it was for the thousands of others who stood along the causeway itself. And then, after the sun had been up for a while and everyone else left, we stayed, touring the temple at our leisure, without the crowds. Road Scholar does it again. 


Like all the other temples, Angkor Wat is best experienced up close. The spaces inside, even the ones we stumble upon, are enormous - great places to fill with our imagination of what Khmer life must have been like. What seem like miles of wall carvings tell story after story to give us a clue. There were wars, good struggled against evil, and gods walked the earth as part-elephant, or dragon, or lion. Multi-headed snakes kept demons at bay so multi-armed dancers could celebrate the empire's many triumphs. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of finger-sized holes in so many walls once held precious jewels. What an empire it must have been...


As you get closer and closer to the center of the temple, the stairs become steeper and more narrow. This was intentional, forcing worshipers to prostrate themselves against the steps as they climbed, the better to express their humility in the presence of the gods. And then we reach the top, ruling the rainforest as Jayavarman VII did at the turn of the 13th century, even if only for an hour. 


After our morning inside Ankgor Wat, we use our free afternoon for a helicopter tour of the temple, nearby Angkor Thom, several other temples, and the surrounding region. The view from above shows how vast Angkor Wat was, and how far Khmer civilization had advanced. A grid of roads, man-made reservoirs, farmland irrigation systems, and walled cities which once held over one million people, can be seen even as the modern town of Siem Reap develops and expands within it. Life on the river may change, but it continues.





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