Mini Temple and Mountain - To the Ruins of Angkor Part 2 [ GX7 ]

The imposing state temple mountain known today as Pre Rup looms above on the eastern approach to the main Angkor temple complex in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Today I would like to continue the mini-series about my visit to Cambodia and the Angkor ruins, and we will go to two temples, Pre Rup and the much smaller temple of Banteay Srei. Let's start off with the second.




Banteay Srei is an isolated smaller temple about 20 miles NE of the city center. The name means "Citadel of the Woman," or "Citadel of Beauty," and refers to its small size and the intricacy of its decorations. I had a few hours to walk around the mini temple, and was able to get a few good shots, though it was hard to find anywhere without a ton of people milling around.




Of course, sometimes the people can be as interesting as the surroundings. Everyone and their grandmother paused to pose next to the intricately carved main entrance.




A set of chambers with mini towers above them sits here near the back end of central shrine, each with what I'm pretty sure is a small fake door.




At the entrance to each tower you have a pair of guardians, each designed as a human body with either a monkey or lion head, or sometimes as a garuda or yaksha. Of course if you look you can see the lighter colored one there that was remade in modern times of concrete, which according to my guide book (Ancient Angkor) that didn't stop idiot thieves from stealing heads and other body parts.




Here's another closer view of the statues.




Banteay Srei is a wonderful little gem of a temple to visit if you have the time, and as it's quite small the hike isn't so bad.




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Now, let's move on to the big temple mountain I visited afterwards. It was the first of the really big chunky temples I was able to see while I was in Cambodia.




This is a more closeup shot of Pre Rup. It is, as you can see in this picture, not in the best of condition, with fallen rocks here and there and many other structures still broken in the inside.




Both sites I'm posting about date from the 10th century, 200 years older than Angkor Wat, and the construction styles are of course quite different so you can almost look at them as prototypes of what will come later (which is one of the reasons I'm posting about them first).




Of course there's a lot of damage to Pre Rup, and nothing remains of the outer edges. It would've in its day been the center of an entire city. Here, I'm looking down from the top level onto two smaller structures that now barely stand.

Let's go down and wander around.




It's really hard to convey size in a picture. But if you look at these I've posted here and keep in your mind that those are high steps leading up on the left, you can get somewhat of an idea. This was the first temple I visited where the massiveness was obvious. But actually, at around 15,000 square meters in size (roughly 4 acres), this site is a shrimp compared to what will come later...

Today I'll finish here, but next up is a tour of one of the bigger and more complex temples.

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To see the first post in this series, click here: The Crumbling Walls of Beng Mealea. As always I was using my Panasonic GX7 micro four thirds camera for these shots, this time using the 14mm F2.5 wide angle lens and the 45-150mm zoom. For more pictures, check out my Flickr Photostream.