preah khan

Hello!

This entry is a slight deviation from the usual Ranting Manor format – something like a 'photo album', but with a bit more commentary than, say, Facebook allows.

The previous rant was about my first day at Angkor, the ancient empire state of the Khmers, which lies in the jungles of northern Cambodia. I said more or less everything I wanted to say about Angkor, but I couldn't leave the subject alone without showing you some photos from our second day.

The main reason for this is that Day Two kicked off at a temple called Preah Khan. When we left our hotel in the morning, I had serious doubts about whether I could cope with another full day of temples. But by the time we'd reached the entrance of this remarkable place, standing in a junge clearing in a state of elegant ruin, my mind was well on its way to being blown all over again.

Every bit as grand, colourful and chaotic as its older sister Ta Prohm (which I enthused about in the previous entry), Preah Khan had one advantage: namely, that when we got there at 8am, we had the place almost to ourselves. We saw just a few tourists wandering through, a group of construction workers out the front working on the main entrance, and a Thai family trying to have breakfast in one of the many ruined halls that led off the main passageway. (They were chased away by a policeman – guess you're not supposed to eat in the sacred spaces of Angkor.)
  

So, what you've got here is basically a short selection of pics from one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited. (I wanted to include many more, but I have to catch a plane this afternoon!)

Hope you enjoy )))

First cab off the rank: the almost inevitable 'cute kid sitting on enormous grisly statue' shot.

Like many of the temples at Angkor, the entrance to Preah Khan is flanked by dvarapala (temple guardians). They're suitably fierce-looking creatures, with warriors' scowls and so on, but when a ridiculously cute Cambodian girl sits on one and starts singing to herself, some of the fearsomeness is definitely lost.

I did take this photo partly for its 'cute value', but I also liked the fact that the dvarapala here has lost part of his arm. It struck me as being somehow symbolic of one of the major problems plaguing Cambodia today: namely, that the whole northern half of the country is packed full of land mines.

Even after decades of clearing, land mines remain a major issue here. There are still a staggering number of live mines in the country (estimates range from 6 million to 42 million), and they claim large numbers victims every year – about 800 in 2009, for example.

Travelling around Cambodia, you see these people all the time: amputees, legless people on wheeled carts, blind people and so on. So it  really is a daily fact of life here.

(Btw, an extremely cool initiative has taught people blinded by landmine explosions to perform therapeutic massage, and the resulting industry has really taken off. Now you can find 'blind massage' centres in any Cambodian city or tourist town. Brilliant idea, no?)

Ok, social conscience sated. Back to looking at pretty stuff )))

Preah Khan's ground plan is extraordinarily complex, with four main enclosures each containing multiple galleries, courtyards and so on, linked by a complicated maze of corridors.

Here, for example, you can see a small courtyard lying adjacent to the central passageway. As with most of the temple, nearly every surface is partly or fully covered with carved motifs or figures, and nature has supplied some extra colour to complete the artwork started by the Khmer.

In a lot of the outlying rooms the ceiling and parts of the walls have collapsed, so as you stroll along the central passageway, you see glimpses of sunlight and great piles of rubble, inviting you into halls and corridors at either side. This one's a ruined cloister leading onto an open verandah area. Cute, isn't it?

The carvings mostly depict figures and episodes from various myths. Back in the day, spiritual beliefs in Cambodia were rather syncretistic, with aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism mixed in with earlier pagan/animist beliefs. So as you walk around the temples, you often see austere Buddhist statues right next to, say, episodes from the life and times of Vishnu (who always looks like he's on the verge of delivering some incredibly cheesy pick-up line, don't you think?).

These ladies are devatas (female deities of Indian descent), often designed to look like they're dancing, or else just smiling enigmatically.

Looking from one parallel roofless hallway to another, Yuliya noticed something weird: there's a second floor, but no stairs. We looked it up in our guide, and apparently there was never a staircase to the upper floor of the temple, as far as anyone knows.

Mmmmm ... spooky )))

But possibly the most spectacular scenery here is supplied by nature herself. When restoration began in Angkor, Ta Prohm and Preah Khan were chosen as sites that should remain as close as possible to their 'natural state'. So everywhere you go, you see what appear to be giant botanical cephalopods** from outer space, locked in mortal combat with the masonry.

Actually these attacks begin inside the walls of the temple, as tiny seeds germinate, grow into enormous silk cotton trees, and burst through the stones. But whether you choose to go with the scientific truth, or the flights of fancy which these scenes inspire, the spectacle is awesome. 

And here's my personal favourite. This enormous silk cotton tree has the rear gopura (entrance door) of the temple in its unshakeable grip, creating a dramatic and surreal final view of Preah Khan that's rather difficult to extract yourself from.

Of course, if you happen to be a mad Ukrainian woman trained in the Eastern arts, you can find 101 uses for this remarkable tangle of stone and wood.

Or, if you're just a typical gawping tourist like me, you can simply stroll around and marvel at the queer beauty of it all. Preah Khan rises quite suddenly out of the undergrowth, immerses you in its hallways and courtyards for a few hundred metres, then rapidly disappears from view as you walk away from it. As the semi-digested remains of the rear wall (pictured below) vanish under a carpet of green, it's fun to let your imagination tell you that you've hallucinated the whole thing under the influence of jungle fever.

Or at least, I thought so )))  

Ok ... that's it for the moment. Have lots more pics of Preah Khan sitting on my hard drive, but no time to sift through them now. This will have to do. Hope you enjoyed the visuals.

Bye!

* The caption of this photo, btw, comes from one of my all-time favourite pieces of music by the Norwegian band Ulver. For some reason, when I first looked at this photo the song (both its music and its title) came to mind.

** The generic word for that family of animals which contains octopi, squid, shrimp and so on. It's another word I simply had to use on The Manor at some point.