It’s best to get straight into the fray: rent a bike or, because it’s quite a long way from Siem Reap to Angkor, a moped. And then you stand there and can’t stop being amazed: This world, formed by human hands from stone and planted in the jungle, is unbelievably spacious and wild. 200 square kilometers in a square, crossed by pools and ruins, with begging monkeys and long-suffering elephants on which tourists swing – the largest temple complex on earth.
It takes two, better three days to get a basic understanding of Angkor Wat, the temple complex in Cambodia that was built by the ancient Khmers. Their elites knew Indian culture, studied Hinduism, Buddhism and astrology there, were gifted irrigation artists – and had a temple city built in their home country from the 9th to the 15th century as an image of the cosmos: the world as a square surrounded by mountain ranges and oceans , in the center of which rises Meru, the mountain of the world.
Did the ancient Khmer priests think their power was eternal? Perhaps. Surely they didn’t expect that thousands of tourists would rumble through their holy sites, press themselves against the dark rock overgrown with roots in the Tomb Raider temple Ta Prohm; gives melancholy pictures. Next to them are monks who don’t look up from their cell phones. This dilapidated city is enchantingly beautiful, and a warning against any kind of hubris: It’s quite good to feel small every now and then.