A Long-Awaited Journey to Angkor Wat

Squeezed into the middle seat in the back row of a Singapore Airlines jet, between Bama and a cheerful Indian doctor vacationing from the U.S., I look out the window at a jungle-shrouded Malaysian island rising from the South China Sea. The moving map on my PTV screen identifies this as Tioman: from the air we spot a pair of sharp, near-vertical granite monoliths known as the Dragon Horns. It’s barely 30 minutes into a two-hour-plus flight when our plane climbs above layers of cloud, the earth’s surface gradually disappearing from view.

When international travel became possible again, Bama and I agreed that our first overseas holiday since the end of 2019 had to be somewhere special. Going long-haul to Europe or North America was not realistic given our limited time off; we needed a Southeast Asian location that was reasonably easy to reach from Jakarta, a place we could spend an entire week without needing to rush around. Thailand seemed like the most obvious and straightforward choice from day one. There were plenty of nonstop flights to Bangkok, and then our options were to either head upriver to the old capital of Ayutthaya or make the short hop by air to Buriram, whose ancient Khmer temples see few foreign visitors. But if we were going down that route, why not visit the heart of the old empire? Bama had once cycled around Angkor for a day as part of a whistle-stop overland trip from Bangkok to Saigon; I had never been. Choosing Cambodia was a no-brainer.

In early December, the start of dry season, the sugar palm-flecked plains around Siem Reap are a vast patchwork of flooded paddy fields the color of old parchment. From up high we see cotton candy–like clouds reflected in the calm waters of Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest lake and the repository for millions of gallons of excess water from the mighty Mekong. Our plane banks to starboard, revealing downtown Siem Reap’s red tiled roofs and tangle of newly resurfaced roads on the approach to the airport. The single runway points northeast, unlike the man-made incisions on the landscape left by ancient Khmer laborers, who dug massive rectangular reservoirs and moats around their great temples and walled capitals, all oriented east-west in a grand design that evolved over time in accordance with the whims of powerful rulers who styled themselves devaraja, god-kings.

Angkor’s original name was Yasodharapura, and until recently historians had little idea of its true scale. Archaeologists using laser-scanning Lidar technology have mapped out the marks left behind by structures made of more perishable materials now lost to the ravages of time. The combination of remote sensing, aerial photography, and on-the-ground fieldwork has revealed an extensive network of canals and gridded city streets hidden beneath the forest cover and fields – a low-density urban sprawl 40 percent larger than modern-day Chicago. At its peak in the 11th to 13th centuries, Angkor may have been home to between 750,000 and a million people, making it the biggest city on the planet in pre-industrial times. Today, the surrounding plain is dotted with the remains of over a thousand temples in different states of repair: some little more than heaps of broken stone or brick, others awe-inspiring monuments that have been carefully restored with expertise and support from countries like France, Germany, India, China, and Japan.

Angkor Wat’s Western Gopura (gateway) seen from across the moat

This moat is an impressive 200 meters (600 feet) wide and four meters (13 feet) deep

Entering the gateway

Ta Reach, an eight-armed statue of Vishnu in the Western Gopura; the gateway’s exterior

A sudden afternoon shower at Angkor Wat

Almost there; two devatas (celestial beings) carved into the walls of the temple

An outward-facing cloister on Angkor Wat’s west side

Two perspectives on the graceful devatas adorning the monumental complex

Chief among these is the incomparable Angkor Wat, which was built over a period of 28 years (1122–1150 CE) under the reign of Suryavarman II. He commissioned it as both the state temple of the Khmer Empire and his intended mausoleum – a place to worship the Hindu deity Vishnu, supreme protector of the universe. Inscriptions tell us the king raised an army of 300,000 construction workers and 6,000 elephants for the project. It’s estimated that at least five million heavy sandstone blocks were quarried from the sacred mountain Phnom Kulen and floated on rafts down man-made canals to the sprawling site, which measures in at just under 163 hectares (402 acres). Even today, it ranks as the world’s largest religious monument. With a wide moat alluding to the cosmic ocean and a temple-mountain at its center symbolizing Mount Meru, the abode of the gods, the layout of Angkor Wat reflects the universe in Hindu cosmology.

Suryavarman II’s ashes were never interred inside the vast complex. He is believed to have died during his second military campaign against the rival kingdom of Champa, located in what is now central and southern Vietnam. Less than three decades later, the Cham, who were skilled warriors in their own right, avenged the Khmer invasions with a surprise naval attack on Yasodharapura via the Mekong and Tonle Sap. Champa forces sacked the proud capital, killed its monarch, and occupied Cambodia for the next four years. When the Cham invaders were ousted and the empire restored under the new king Jayavarman VII, Khmer denizens increasingly turned their back on the Hindu gods. Angkor Wat was eventually converted into a Buddhist temple, and with the passage of time the name Suryavarman II vanished from memory. Even after the surrounding city disappeared and the jungle closed in, Angkor’s greatest monument was never completely abandoned: its decaying halls of worship drew a steady stream of monks and local pilgrims.

Travelers from distant countries like China, Japan, and Portugal visited over the centuries, but it wasn’t until 1860 that French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot brought the marvel to the attention of the Western world. He quipped in his travel journals that Angkor Wat was “grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome,” and the mere sight of the great temple was enough to make the traveler “forget all the fatigues of the journey, filling him with admiration and delight, such as would be experienced on finding a verdant oasis in the sandy desert.”

Looking down Angkor Wat’s raised ceremonial causeway toward the temple proper

Sugar palms amid the 900-year-old buildings

The Battle of Kurukshetra between the Pandava and Kaurava clans, taken from the Mahabharata

A war elephant – part of the Pandava army – in the same frieze

One of the towers crowning the central sanctuary; an unrestored statue of a Hindu god

Devatas with traces of paint or lacquer; the corner of a bas-relief gallery

Mouhot was based in Thailand at the time, and an unfortunate combination of heavy rain and rough seas made his voyage from the port of Chanthaburi to Kampot in southern Cambodia a perilous one. The promised transportation did not show up when he left Kampot – he had to procure his own ox-drawn wagons for the overland expedition into the Khmer heartlands, which was largely done on foot. Adding to Mouhot’s woes were the sheer amount of luggage and his hardened leather hunting boots, which forced him to spent days on end walking without shoes. This painful slog through mosquito-infested marshland and forest proved torturous for someone more used to the temperate climes of Europe: “Our sufferings from the heat exceeded all I had ever imagined of the effect of the sun in the torrid zone,” he wrote. “Its burning rays, falling on the sandy soil, became intolerable at ten o’clock in the morning.”

A subsequent passage mentions how the travelers quenched their thirst with tea using boiled water from stagnant pools along the route. The Frenchman lamented the fact that their clothes were almost always soaked through because of the rain and oppressive humidity; his two servants fell ill with malaria. In places where the party had to camp out in the open, fires were lit to ward off the “ferocious denizens” of the jungle: wild elephants, rhinoceros, tigers, and venomous snakes. Mouhot’s recollections of that harrowing journey make our complaints about 21st-century air travel seem like the tiniest of inconveniences.

These days, ox-drawn carts no longer rule Southeast Asia’s country roads. Bama and I tour the sprawling Angkor Archaeological Park by remork – the uniquely Cambodian take on a tuk-tuk featuring a motorcycle-pulled carriage with padded seating and wide wooden armrests. Many get their first sight of Angkor Wat at sunrise, when visitors flock to its reflecting pools to watch the sky lighten in dusky pinks and yellows against the dark silhouette of the great temple. Bama’s attempt to go back in 2011 was a flop: he found the front gates of the hostel padlocked and there was no one on duty. This time, though both of us are early risers, we agreed it was not worth the hassle of jostling with pre-dawn crowds to photograph the monument’s backlit spires. Why not spend an extra hour in bed or enjoy a proper breakfast?

For now, the broad sandstone causeway over the moat is closed for restoration, so tourists are funneled onto a pontoon bridge whose modular plastic floats seem to rise or fall with every footstep. “My mom would be a little scared,” Bama says. Reaching the other side, we ooh and aah at sculptures of seven-headed naga serpents and beautifully carved devatas: celestial beings with exquisite headdresses, hairstyles, and jewelry mirroring those of real-life women in 12th-century Cambodia.

The temple’s Bakan, or central sanctuary

One of four standalone “libraries” enclosed within the walls of Angkor Wat

A corridor and secondary entrance at the Western Gopura

Suryavarman II, the builder-king behind Angkor Wat, presiding over a military parade

Commanders on horseback

Khmer foot soldiers (left) and Siamese mercenaries (right)

Life on earth (center) and sinners enduring torment in hell (bottom)

Angkor Wat’s most celebrated bas-relief, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk

Going counter-clockwise from the west, Bama and I make a slow circuit around the bas-relief galleries, marveling at the rich tapestry of stories that covers an area of 1,200 square meters (about 12,900 square feet). There are pitched battles from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, Hindu epics still remembered in the traditional art forms of modern-day Southeast Asia. One long frieze immortalizes a triumphant procession with Suryavarman II himself, fanned by servants and shaded by more than a dozen parasols as he sits cross-legged on a wooden dais. Preceding him are courtiers and Khmer troops, military commanders riding on horses or elephants, and a contingent of Siamese mercenaries. A passing local guide points out the foreign fighters to the group of tourists in his charge. “The men who look like women are the Thais.” This is on account of their distinctive headgear, which has strands of beads falling behind the ears and a plant-like arrangement of feathers sprouting from a tiered cap. Then, a little farther on, we find a portrayal of 37 heavens and 32 hells according to the ancient Hindu texts known as the Puranas, showing sinners being punished (read: tortured) for their grievous misdeeds.

Adorning the walls of the eastern gallery is Angkor’s most famous bas-relief, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. It depicts a thousand-year-long tug-of-war between the Hindu gods and the demons, using the serpent Vasuki as a rope coiled around mythical Mount Mandara to extract amrita, the elixir of immortality, from the depths of the cosmic ocean. This ultimately successful endeavor was overseen by Vishnu, who transformed himself into a giant tortoise, Kurma, to support the sinking mountain. The churning also brought forth the goddesses of wealth (Lakshmi) and wine (Madira); the moon; the wish-fulfilling tree called Kalpavriksha; and the apsaras, celestial dancers whose charms were practically irresistible to any mortal man. Emphasizing the difference between good and evil, ancient Khmer artisans inserted the multi-headed demon king Ravana and the powerful god Hanuman into the story. Mouhot describes this bas-relief in great detail, though he mistakes the four-armed figure of Vishnu for an angel and conflates Hanuman with Sdach Sva, the Khmer name for the Monkey King (Sun Wukong) in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.

Torrential downpours color the first of our three afternoons spent at Angkor Wat. We are stranded for some time in the cloisters of the highest level known as the Bakan, a place accessed via ludicrously steep wooden stairs. But the inclement weather also sets the scene for a few serendipitous moments. The skies unexpectedly open while we’re inside the galleries of the Western Gopura (gateway); it has the immediate effect of clearing the raised ceremonial causeway leading to the main temple of all other visitors, save three Cambodian youths huddled under a single umbrella, the lotus-bud towers behind them blurred by a curtain of raindrops. This composition becomes one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip. As we leave the central compound, a kind-hearted traveler with a German accent alerts us to the mirror-image of Angkor Wat revealed in large puddles on the 350-meter (1,148-foot) causeway. I crouch down to take photos as sunlight filters through the indigo-grey rainclouds, not knowing if these accidental reflecting pools will be gone by morning. ◊

Vishnu atop Mount Mandara, flanked by Asuras (demons) on the left and Devas (gods) on the right

These bas-relief galleries won’t be empty for long

War between Krishna and the Asura army; this relief was created only in the 16th century

A fierce battle between the Devas and the Asuras

Looking out over the Western Gopura and causeway from the Bakan

Beyond the temple hallways, a lush tropical forest

This torrential downpour created a few mini-waterfalls at the Bakan

Reflections after the rain; the view from the temple’s highest accessible level

One final look at Angkor Wat