Secret sights: Cambodia’s ancient ruins

Ashwin Bhardwaj explores Cambodia’s ancient ruins including the recently ‘discovered’ hidden city of Mahendraparvata

Sacred shrine: Buddhist monks at Angkor Wat (Picture: Timothy Allen/Getty)

London Evening Standard | 5 February 2014

 

In the jungle surrounding Siem Reap, temples spring like mushrooms from the forest floor; more than a thousand years old, and aligned with astrological constellations, they were built as dedications to the Angkorian Gods.

The spectacular Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, is the best-known of these monuments. An earthly representation of the abode of the Gods, it is the largest religious building in the world (the temples are still places of pilgrimage for Cambodians) and one of the few places that I’ve visited that actually lives up to the hype. 

It takes several days to do justice to the temples around Siem Reap and it was no hardship returning each day to the Raffles Grand Hotel D’Angkor — a spectacular French colonial retreat, complete with Cambodia’s largest swimming pool. Relaxing in the shallows with an Angkor Beer after a day of exploration, the sultry evening air was heady with the scent of frangipani mixed with the fragrant spices of Amok — a fish and coconut curry, steamed in banana leaves. 

My guide in this archaeological adventure was John McDermott, who has been photographing Angkorian temples for nearly 20 years. He now takes visitors off the beaten track, using photography as a tool to look more deeply at the buildings that he fell in love with. We started with Preah Khan, a 12th-century temple in Angkor, a brief 15-minute drive from Raffles.

“I came here in the Nineties and couldn’t believe what I saw,” he said, as we passed two decapitated giants. “These are alien-looking structures that could have been in Star Trek, with trees gripping them like the hands of a giant.”

Hopping through windows, over rubble and around vines, I began to notice hidden details and contrasts of colours. Sitting on the roof of a two-storey library, gazing across tumbled lintels and beheaded statues, I imagined the dawn of this ancient civilisation, when these temples would have thronged with thousands of worshippers.

But this was just the preparation phase of my trip. Last year, a previously unknown city, Mahendraparvata, was discovered in the middle of the Phnom Kulen plateau, 50km north of Siem Reap. Before seeing it for myself, I wanted to meet the man who helped to find it.

Hidden city: the Raffles Grand Hotel D’Angkor, in Siem Reap Stéphane de Greef might not seem like your usual Belgian. After training as a forestry engineer, he came to Cambodia to map minefields, before helping disrupt human trafficking. For the past three years, he has been working on an international project that uses Lidar (helicopter-mounted laser) to measure variations in land height.

“We had writings about Mahendraparvata from other sources,” he explained. “We suspected it was on Phnom Kulen but what was there did not match the descriptions of an enormous capital city.”

He pulled out a screen showing the Phnom Kulen plateau and a random pattern of green dots. “Imagine looking down on London and only seeing Christopher Wren’s churches: it would just look like lots of villages. But with Lidar, we could see the shadows of what had been there before. It was as if you thought London was just two or three streets around Covent Garden.  Then everything in Zone 1 was suddenly revealed to you.”

He touched the screen again and dozens of red lines burst into life, linking the green squares, drawing out grids in previously blank areas. 

The next day, we drove from Siem Reap past paddy fields, waving children and houses on stilts. A huge escarpment dominates the horizon — the sandstone plateau of Phnom Kulen. After an hour, the track became impassable to our 4x4, so we switched to motorbikes. I clung to the back of my saddle while the driver negotiated a muddy trail through thick forest, swerving to avoid the webs of golden orb spiders.

Thirty minutes of travel later, we pull to a stop in the forest. As the engine cuts out, I hear nothing but the call of birds and crickets in the undergrowth. Pushing through dense foliage, I spot a huge animal dominating the clearing; as I round a tree, I find myself face-to-face with an enormous elephant, a full-size pachyderm statue cut from the living rock.

Keeping to the path to avoid landmines, I walked to the edge of a cliff, found a gap between trees and sat down to enjoy a breathtaking view over the plains of Cambodia. It was on this mountain, in 802 AD, that King Jayavarma II founded the Angkorian Kingdom, which grew to cover the plains below. I began to understand the audacity of Jayavarma’s project: the stones used to build the temples are enormous — a 300-metre-wide canal was dug to move water around the empire — and the forest, once tamed but now regrown, is so dense that visibility is barely 10 metres.

Most visitors to Siem Reap will just tick off Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. But for the more ambitious, a day trip to Phnom Kulen is a rewarding one. The archaeologists are barely beginning to scratch the surface of this hidden city and the discoveries to come will be equally astounding. 

As word gets out, the inevitable development will occur and the tourists will follow but on that day we were alone in the clearing. Go now for an encounter with the real Cambodia, of the present and of the past.

DETAILS: CAMBODIA
Thai Airways has return flights from Heathrow to Phnom Penh via Bangkok from £800, thaiairways.co.uk. Internal flights to Siem Reap with Cambodian Angkor Air from £37 one-way, cambodiaangkorair.com/en/
Raffles Grand Hotel D’Angkor has doubles from £215 B&B. raffles.com
One-day tour of Angkor Wat and Preah Kan, £55.09 for two; one-day Phnom Kulen excursion, £174 for two including a car with driver and temple pass (all include English-speaking guide), half-day photography workshop with John McDermott (asiaphotos.net), £214 for two people.