The Visit - Day 2

Day 2:
We started in the morning at around 8:30. Our itinerary for day 2 was Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. On our way to the south gate of Angkor Thom, we saw a huge baloon. The guide told the baloon ride is available as there are no strong winds. So we decided to go for the ride and drove to the baloon station. The platform in the baloon can accomodate about 30 people. We waited for sometime for more visitors but nobody came. The operator decided to fly the baloon for just 3 of us. The baloon goes upto 150 metres above the ground. It is just about 1 km from the west gate of Angkor Wat and about 2 kms east of the airport. Took some aerial shots of the Angkor Complex. The ride was just for 15 minutes. But it was a fantastic experience. It costs 12USD per head.
We then decended and drove straight to the South Gate of Angkor Thom. One could see the scenes of ‘churning the sea of milk’ sculpted on either side of the pathway to the gate. To your left you see “devas” and to your right are “asuras” - tugging “vasuki”. Inside the Angkor Thom complex, there are numerous small and big temples & structures. The complex spreads over 500 hectares. May be bigger. The prime attractions inside the complex are The Bayons, Bhapuon, Terrace of the Elephants, Terrace of the Leper King, Tep Pranom, Preah Palilay, North & South Kleang etc. There are many small structures too. But it is difficult to visit every single thing.
There are different modes of transport available. Taxis (mostly Toyota cars), Tuk-tuks (a funny vehicle - like our cycle rickshaw but attached to a 100cc motorcycle) and elephants. We chose to ride an elephant to go upto The Bayons. My daughter enjoyed it a lot. It is about a kilometer and a half from the gate. The Bayons is medium sized complex with 54 towers. Every tower looks the same as I had described in the earlier post. (see pic) The bas reiefs of various battles are sculpted on the “prahara” walls. Similar to the ones we see at Mahabalipuram. Inside, we climbed and climbed and climbed (sigh!!) and reached the bottom of central tower. The central tower is totally in bad shape and is not climbable. We went around the third tier and took some good snaps. It was bright and sunny. So I could get some clear and decent pics.
There is something worth mentioning here. To beat the heat, plenty of tender coconuts are available. The coconuts are so big, one is enough to quench the thirst of three people.
Then we visited the Terrace of Elephant and the Terrace of Leper King. These are located side by side. The Elephant Terrace is for the kings to view the performances. There are sculptures of Irawat (hree headed elephant) and Garuda. (Garuda & Hanuman are important icons in Cambodian culture. They beleive that when Garuda spreads his wings, it symbolises great power.) The Leper King terrace should have been the royal crematorium. We can see the statue of the leper king on top of the terrace. This statue is a duplicate and the original is kept in the national museum for security. There are two different versions about this Leper King. One is that he is Yasovarman II who suffered from leprosy was cremated there. Another version is Leper King actually symbolises “Yama Dharmaraja”, the god of death. The side walls are decorated with sculptures of “adi sesha”, asuras, devas, apsaras etc. They indicate their belief in heaven and hell.
Then we walked down to Tep Pranom. This is a shiva temple with a huge “swayambu” lingam. But the temple is totally in rumbles and the entrance is closed with stones fallen from the tower. We can just see the temple from outside. While we went around the temple and when I was busy trying an angle to take a snap of the tower, the guide noticed a small snake very near to my leg and shouted. Before stepping back, I took a snap of the snake too. Anyway, it was just lying there and didn’t bite me, luckily.
It was already 2pm and we went back to the city for lunch. At about 4 pm, we drove back to the east gate of Angkor Wat. The place I was dying to see for last many years. There were nobody else except the 4 of us. We walked down to the angkor complex. It was rather long walk. The temple just too big. It has 2 “praharas”, 2 tiers and 9 towers. The walls of outer “prahara” is divided into 8 “galleries” and each gallery (must be about 400 metres long and 5 metres high) has bas reliefs of many scenes. We started with the south side of eastern gallery. This gallery depicts the churning the sea of milk. The hill “mandara” is used as the shaft and the naga “vasuki” is used as the rope. Vishnu transforms himself into “koorma” (tortoise) and support “mandara” from the bottom of the sea. Shiva oversees the “project”. To the right side is devas and to the left is asuras.
We turn right (east of southern gallery) and this gallery depicts the existence of heaven and hell. The gallery is divided in to 3 horizontally. The upper part depicts the heaven with devas and apsaras dancing and gods. The lower part depicts the “punishments” in the hell (like frying in the oil pan, whipping, piercing with lances etc - this reminded me of the garuda puranam in the film Anniyan). Garuda stands between the heaven and hell in the middle part with his wings widespread as if he is “lifting” the heaven. They believe that there are 32 heavens and 32 hells !!
The west of the southern gallery depicts the life of Gautama Buddha. The south and north of the west galleries depict our great epic Ramayana. It took almost an hour to go round these corridors. Then we went into the complex. Again the steps to the second tier, where the sanctum sanctorum lies, are too steep. By now I had learnt the knack of climbing the steps and I climbed to the second tier. It is little tricky indeed. A huge Buddha statue in standing posture and another statue in sleeping posture (like Ranganatha) is found. There was big crowd of tourists marvelling at the architecture.
Then we climbed down and walked to the west gate. There is a small temple near the west gate where we can see the statue of Vishnu. This is the only temple, where the original statue is not replaced by buddha statue yet. And Angkor Wat is the only temple where people come for worship regularly.
By now we were tired. But we already had plans to watch the sun set from the top of the hillock Phnom Bekeng. This hillock is adjuscent to the south gate of Angkor Thom. It was already 5pm and our guide told us to climb up the hillock fast as the sun sets at around 5:45pm. With my daughter on my shoulders (already slept) we climbed up the hillock. It is not too steep but the pathway is narrow. It takes about 30 minutes to reach the top. There is a small temple complex on top of the hill. It is about 25 metres high. No need to mention that the steps are steep. There was a big crowd and I managed to climb up without stamping on the hands of people climbing up and down. (Yes…you need to use both your hands and legs to climb like rock climbing !!) On the top, to my astonishment, I saw a big crowd waiting to capture that moment the sun sets. There must have been atleast 3000 people. The view upto the horizon was clear with no hurdles. I think people must have been waiting there from 4pm itself. Many professional photographers had set their tripods and shooting. (I tripped on somebody’s tripod and he gave a dirty look.) I took some snaps while the sun was little high up but I was afraid that there could be a stampede if everybody starts climbing down immediately after the sun sets. So I came down immediately after taking a few snaps. We got down the hill and drove back to the central market to buy some souveniers.
Day 2 ended thus with some fantastic experiences and tired legs.

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