Angkor Wat - Vignette of a Sunrise Visit

You step outside. Even at four in the morning, the air is warm and moist, but once you start riding it’s cool on your face. It’s a long drive, through the tree-lined lanes.

You feel alone but you can see small tuktuk lights ahead and behind you, and occasionally you pass someone on the way. In the shadows you see hammocks strung between the trees, and imagine the vibrant Cambodian stilt houses of Angkor Period rising in the jungle around you.

Arriving at the West entrance, you can just sense the outer wall of Angkor Wat cutting a darker line against the blue of the pre-dawn. Join the pilgrimage of people making their way across the moat, struggling to keep your balance on the slippery plastic walkway which disappears in the mist behind you.

As soon as you step onto the thousand-year old dirt, you become alone in the crowd.

You walk through the first doorway, disappearing into blackness before emerging inside the temple walls. From here you can go left or stick right, along the trees that mark where the row of old houses used to stand.

Go right, and cut a diagonal across the grass. Maybe it’s dewey, maybe it’s just a bit squishy under your feet. Stand at the spot where the shadows fade into the reflecting pond, as the sun makes its way up behind the five central towers.

Angkor Wat was designed on a grid according to the solar and lunar systems, in alignment with the stars. From North to South is 1 km. Naga banisters decorate the central walkway from outer gate to main temple. Nagas are a seven-headed snake from Hindu mythology. Here, these carved snakes have only heads on each end—no tails—to represent eternal spiritual life, and to protect evil demons from entering.

Each naga along the central walk marks another angle of sunrise, so you can trace the passing of time over the weeks by progressing further up the walkway, watching sunrise from the next closest naga with each consecutive week. In one year, the sun makes its circuit, rising behind the temple from left to right corner and back again, a Stonehenge-esque passing of time. On the Equinox, stand on the pathway at the central naga balustrade, and watch the center tower to see the sun rise with great precision over the top of the spire. The design and function are so perfectly aligned it is clear the ancient builders followed the motto “measure twice, carve once.”

Struggles of mortality and immortality are clearly laid out along the temple walls, carved with unimaginable precision. Millions of faces, each one distinct. Monkeys, demons, Apsara dancers, the king himself. All the gods of Hindu lore, locked in eternal struggle in these carvings on the temple walls. It’s reminiscent of a painting which looks simple from afar, but upon closer inspection, the overwhelming and complex details begin to emerge, requiring hours of dissection and discussion.

I don’t know how many times I’ve gazed at this temple wall, transported back in time. I imagine myself one of these workers, hauling tons of sandstone and lava stone for 70 kilometers. By elephant, by water, by manpower; stacking these stones on top of each other, far overhead, and then climbing up to carve with such aching precision the faces of demons, gods, and humans all interlocked in cosmic battle.

What were carvers hoping to share through this talent? What are people in the future going to see when they look at this art: what will they imagine, what will they understand? Or maybe the builders didn’t think about the future. Maybe the task was so all-consuming they could think only of the next square inch of stone to carve.

In the early hours, as the sun just peeks over the temple wall, walk along in the ultra-dark shadows beneath these carved faces. Look out over the palm trees, the crumbling stones of the library, and just for a moment tell yourself: this is my Kingdom. You can’t see the people on the lawn by the reflecting pond. All you see is the shape of monkeys running along the stone rooftops. Imagine the ancient neighborhoods of wooden houses laid out on a grid, of people bustling about daily life - relaxing in hammocks, working, hauling stone; stonemasons massaging their aching hands.

If I didn’t see Angkor Wat myself, I wouldn’t believe it. After more than ten visits, I have barely grasped the sheer audacity humans had to imagine this building into reality. And it’s just one of hundreds—Angkor Wat is one temple among hundreds. What an incredible feat.

As sunlight hits the grass and stone of the courtyard, the warmth and bustle of modern Cambodia starts to replace the cold serenity of ancient memory. Retrace your steps down the sandstone walkway, past the library, out the entry gate, and back over the floating bridge. The marvels of Angkor are in intrinsic part of Khmer culture, but by no means the end of the creative consciousness of the Cambodian people. With a deeper understanding of the past, leave the Angkorian period and return to the vibrant Cambodia of today.