At what time the sun will rise?
Unfortunately, I ask this question only after - like a lot of other people - standing at six-thirty in front of the pitch-dark entrance to Angkor Wat. The question concerns time: what is the reason that you have to get up at half past four in order to be here so early? And that is the question of all questions at all ... But nobody seems to know to answer. The eternal mysteries of Asia ...
Dark as in a cow's stomach
I stumble across the bridge in the light of the iPhone flashlight to the entrance, in front, behind and beside me numerous other shadowy figures, dumb and tired. At best you hear suppressed murmuring, a short laugh, steps on stone. The whole thing is unpleasantly reminiscent of night marches at long forgotten army times ...
It’s dark as in a cow’s stomach, a few isolated stars shining on a cloudless sky, walls of ancient stones growing high before the sleepy eyes. In the middle of the huge walled courtyard there’s a pond, apparently the meeting point of the sun worshipers. Slowly the twilight creeps in, the world gains form and colors, and now one recognizes the brothers in spirit, which, smartphones, cameras, iPads ready, have gathered at the pond.
But the stomach is empty, the mind as well, and so I decide to leave the pond, and drink a cup of coffee. This is once again one of these strange events in the early morning, and again an episode happening in India comes to mind, to be precise in Udupi a few hours south of Goa (oh India, source of the most wonderful episodes, an eternal Monty Python sketch coming to life).
Coffee with additives
The coffee is good (with condensed milk!) and could bring Lazarus to life in an emergency.
That within a few minutes about twenty tiny, white mosquitoes (flies? moths?) swim lifelessly in the coffee and give it a milky complexion, I find a bit too much, and so a race develops, in which I must try to fish more mosquitoes out of the coffee than new ones plunge to their death ...
A million clicks ...
Eventually - in the meantime the square in front of the pond has filled up - an initially imperceptible blush creeps up behind the majestic temple complexes, unrest develops, a multilingual, nervous murmur lies expectantly over the unreal surroundings, and there, like a sudden splash of colour in the sky, just behind the towers, orange and round and bright, the sun ... And a million clicks, all at exactly the same moment ...
All in all, yes, it was worth it, although there are probably millions of better photos, but it's yours that count. If you have picked just the right spot, where the temple complex is reflected in the water of the pond, caught the right moment, the right position of the towers, then it's pure magic ...
And just now they all become visible, the hundreds of spectators, touched by the wonderful spectacle repeating every day with grandiose regularity ...
From one Cairn to the next
But the day has just begun and once again it will be long and hot and getting a bit tedious. The Tuk-Tuk driver reels his program off, unloads me here and there, and while he gets his next friendly chat with a colleague, I stumble to the next cairn, still excited, but less and less motivated and I’m more and more annoyed by the many tour groups, the tourists which neither see nor marvel the beauty of the temples, but shoot photos primarily of themselves or the other participants …
I'm starting to know my way around. I don't follow the crowds of people who sluggishly drag themselves from one temple to another, I look for my own ways. Sometimes away from the hustle and bustle, marvelling at overgrown hills, which most likely also hide something, sometimes behind a turnoff, where there's no sound.
It's a miracle. A man made miracle. Snatched from the jungle, maybe at the last moment.
And so another day goes by, almost the last, time's getting tight now ...
Evening in Siem Reap
Siem Reap, although a first class tourist resort, with numerous restaurants offering every menu, with music, exhibitions and the inevitable traffic, I like it very much. The city itself doesn't offer too much, it doesn't need that, because everybody comes for Angkor Wat.
Still, I'm comfortable. Just like the day before, I eat in my restaurant, and while I enjoy eating, I watch the hustle and bustle on the streets and alleys. Silent melancholy comes up, tomorrow I go back to Phnom Penh …
P.S. Matching Song: The Marbles - The Walls fell down
And here the journey continues ...
