Angkor Wat Awakening

On any other ordinary Monday I would be up by five o’ clock, before the sun is even up, getting ready to go to work. This time I was up even earlier. By five I was at the gate of Borann, where I found Mr. Ho waiting with his touk-touk. I was about to give Angkor Wat another try, in what I hoped would be a more benevolent backdrop: sunrise.

The darkness lifted gradually as the touk-touk exited town, so that by the time we reached the tree-canopied road to Angkor, I wondered whether the handful of tourists we passed on their bicycles—some of whom I’d also glimpsed working their pedals the previous day—would make it in time to catch the sun’s ascent over the temple. Entering the courtyard with my camera and tripod, I found what must be a couple of hundred sun-greeters already assembled along the far wall of the enclosure beyond the moat, arrayed as though in the balcony of a theater. I stood to one side of the walkway, leaning against a pillar, to wait along with them with bated breath.

The sun, when it finally made its appearance, did so on the far left side of the temple—if you are facing it, that is—so that one could not place both the rising sun and Angkor Wat’s three trademark lotus-shaped towers in the same frame of a photograph, except by showing the towers on the lower right-hand corner in much reduced size. This was just what I did, taking shots of the temple in silhouette. I then clambered down the walkway to the lotus pond, where Angkor Wat’s lotus towers were reflected on the calm surface of the water, as though seeking their living, breathing floral kin.

Back on the walkway, I was strolling towards the main temple, eager to make up for my somewhat mediocre first visit, when I overheard some tourists talking as they descended the steps to the little path on one side of the temple. “They say it’s better to walk around it,” one of them said. “That’s what I heard,” another answered. And so I retraced my steps back down the wooden steps and made my way down to the footpath opposite the one taken by those tourists who had unwittingly inspired me. I ambled down the narrow trail, pausing to take a picture of a monkey—Hanuman’s emissary?—perched imperturbably on a stone banister. The path tapered off at the corner of the grounds, giving way to grass wet with dew and probably still soggy from the previous night’s rain. As I wondered where to go next, my eyes were drawn to a cluster of small stupas behind a screen of trees to one side of the grounds. It looked promising so I veered off the path towards it. It turned out to be a graveyard in traditional style, probably nothing as old as the temple but ancient-looking nonetheless, weathered by the elements. There was something eerie about the female figures kneeling on each corner of some of the tombs, their hands pressed together before them as though in prayer, or the disembodied heads on top of some of the stupas. They were elaborate graves and it occurred to me that those resting in them must not be ordinary people. Possibly, they sheltered the remains of monks, as the graveyard sits beside a modern-day temple. But among the large ornate graves was a cluster of little, unadorned ones, unmistakably those of babies, so it didn’t seem plausible that it was a cemetery dedicated to the celibate. Perhaps they were intended for dead nobility. Wandering among the graves gave me a sense of fragile mortality, and I felt compelled to say a prayer to propitiate the spirits I felt were watching me, before raising my camera to my eyes to take some pictures. After a while, probably finishing their prayers, a string of monks in their characteristic orange robes approached the little building by the graves, eyeing me with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. Smiling to reassure them that I meant no disrespect to the departed, I tarried awhile before slowly ambling away, reluctant to break the eerie spell the graves had cast on me.

The morning was still cool as I emerged into the walkway. A light breeze was blowing, almost imperceptible but for the ripples it made on the water in the moat. I glanced over my shoulder to catch another glimpse of the temple, beautiful and serene. I would have wanted to return to the main galleries but for the crowds that were already starting to pour in. Angkor Wat by the soft glow of sunrise, that was enough for now. Perhaps I could return another time when the temple would be miraculously, blessedly free of hordes of sightseers, and then I could ponder the enigmas it harbors.

(May 2007)