Ascending the Temple - To the Ruins of Angkor Part 4 [ GX7 ]

In the Distance you see the looming ruins of Angkor Wat.




Like any story, I think it's best if we start at the beginning. Today's post I will be talking about Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. The above picture was taken on the bridge leading to the main gate. If you didn't know any better you would think it was built in the middle of a massive lake, but it's actually a moat surrounding the temple complex.




Now I'm at the end of the bridge. I still haven't even entered - this set of towers and walls is just the main gateway inside.




Glance to the left and you can sort of get an idea of just how big the gate is. Sort of. It's so big you can't even see the end as it disappears into the woods.




Now we're inside, but the temple itself is still far away. Up on the left ahead you see a smaller temple complex. I made my way there only to get out of the sun for just a bit - the weather that day was around 106° Fahrenheit (41° C), and with the humidity it was much worse, possibly the hottest I've ever felt in my life, easily worse than I've ever experienced in Japan or the US.




This picture was taken at the sub-temple and shows off the front of the main building of Angkor Wat very well, though unfortunately some construction is covering part of the main entryway. But it still doesn't give you enough of a feel for just how huge and intricate the temple is. Let's head inside.




Here is the NW entrance. Unlike most temples in the area, you enter Angkor Wat from the west.




Thankfully, wooden steps have been built over the much steeper original stone stairs leading inside. This is the 1st inner wall (of 3).




This path leads around the outer wall, giving you an occasional peek inside. As my friend said to me when we were talking about visiting Cambodia, Angkor Wat is one of the few places on earth where you can get a glimpse of what infinity feels like.




Now I am at the farthest north side of the temple, facing the path going up into the next inner wall. Though at this point it felt like I'd been walking forever I was only 1/4 of the way around.




At nearly the top of the stairs, looking to the west you can see another sub-temple there. The architecture here is probably the most amazingly intricate and exact that you can see anywhere in the world. What's also interesting is that the ground level you see here, between the outer and inner wall, is actually about 20 feet higher than the ground around the temple (which rises each time you go through another wall), making the whole structure a big pyramid in design.




Fast forwarding a bit, we come to the top of the central inner temple, looking down to the west over the inner and outer walls. In the far distance you can see the outer gates.




Here is a view looking directly west.




Here is a section of inner wall, leading up to the central main tower inside the 3rd (innermost) wall. I saw a picture like this when I was 10 or 11 on some TV show or in a National Geographic magazine and the image stayed with me forever.

It's what brought me to Angkor Wat, and in many ways is one of the reasons I wanted to visit Asia from the time I was quite young. To be able to really see it at last was just incredible.




Angkor Wat is amazing of course for the architecture and grand scale, but there are also several thousand carvings like these on all the walls. I only had a few hours to visit, so couldn't see more than a fraction of all the beautiful wall decorations.




Stairs and stairlike patterns adorn the walls leading to the inner chambers in the main tower. For a sense of scale, I could easily stand without ducking under the openings on the left side of this picture. I read somewhere that experts say this inner set of four open courtyards may have originally been filled with water.




Unlike some of the more ruined temples, Angkor Wat is hard to get lost in because of just how exact and well designed it is. Even without a compass or map, the layout seems to pull you in the right direction at all times. But it's very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer size.




This is one of several flights of stairs leading upwards toward the central main tower. This one doesn't have the tourist-friendly wood step structure built onto it, so you can see just how steep the original design is.

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Just how big is Angkor Wat? The outer walls measure over 3000 by 2600 feet long, and inside that is the 620 ft wide moat - which means the area inside the outer wall is over 200 acres. The main temple is 613 x 705 feet, an area roughly the size of 8 football fields. That's for one temple.

It is unique in its sheer size, but also in its relatively good state of preservation. Completed in the 12th century it was the state temple of kings, and would've been the center of a city of tens of thousands. It was first made as a Hindu temple, was sacked, and then later converted into Buddhist use. But unlike most other ruins in the area, it was still in use when the first western visitors came upon it around the 16th century, and is still in use today. Yes, the civilization declined but the traditions were continued through the centuries to this day.

Traveling there was, simply put, incredible, one of those experiences that seems almost too amazing to believe while it's happening and that stays with you forever when it's done. I only hope that my pictures can do it some justice. Well, actually that's almost impossible. How do you convey something like this place with just images? I guess my real hope is that seeing these pictures inspires more people to visit Cambodia and see this place for themselves, because that is the only way to really understand and feel it.

It is a journey that will stay with me forever, a pilgrimage in every sense of the world.

If you have time, please check out the other posts I've made about my trip to Cambodia: The Crumbling Walls of Beng Mealea, Mini Temple and Mountain, and The Jungle Temple Ta Prohm.

For more information on this great temple, please check out the Wikipedia page: Angkor Wat Wikipedia.

Also, you might want to see pictures other people took at Flickr. There are a lot of fantastic photographers that've visited the area, so please have a look at the images they've taken.