Angkor

Angkor is the former heartland of the Khmer Empire, spread across about 400 square kilometres of forest, rice fields and reservoirs north of Siem Reap in north-western Cambodia. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1992, which means the World Heritage Committee judged it to be of outstanding value to humanity and committed the country, with international help, to protecting it. The park holds the remains of several successive capitals, among them Angkor Wat, the walled city of Angkor Thom and the root-wrapped temple of Ta Prohm.

Most visitors arrive for Angkor Wat at dawn and share the view with a great many others who had the same idea. The more rewarding approach is to treat Angkor as a landscape rather than a single monument. Its temples were one part of a system of roads, canals and enormous reservoirs that fed a population in the hundreds of thousands, and the system is easiest to appreciate once the sunrise crowd has gone for breakfast.

The Khmer Empire traces its beginnings to the early ninth century, when Jayavarman II established a kingdom on the Kulen plateau and then at Hariharalaya, near present-day Roluos. His successors moved the capital northwards, and in the late ninth century Yasovarman I founded Yasodharapura, the first city at Angkor, centred on the hill temple of Phnom Bakheng. Over the next three centuries each major king built a state temple, a reservoir or both.

Angkor Wat was built in the early 12th century under Suryavarman II as a temple to the Hindu god Vishnu. After a Cham invasion in 1177, Jayavarman VII drove out the invaders, took the throne and rebuilt the capital as Angkor Thom. He was a Buddhist, and the Bayon, Ta Prohm and Preah Khan reflect that shift, which was followed by a long period in which Hindu and Buddhist imagery were reworked and layered over each other, sometimes by chiselling one set of figures into another.

The Khmer court moved away from Angkor in the 15th century, and the capital eventually settled near Phnom Penh. Angkor was never wholly abandoned: monks kept Angkor Wat in use as a Buddhist temple, and Khmer and foreign travellers continued to visit. The French naturalist Henri Mouhot brought it to wider European attention in 1860, and French scholars began systematic conservation work in the early 20th century.

Conservation work resumed in the 1990s after decades of conflict. Angkor was inscribed in 1992, with international teams from many countries working alongside Cambodian specialists. Cambodia established the APSARA National Authority in 1995 to manage the park, and the authority remains responsible for it today.

Angkor was inscribed under four criteria, which are the tests the World Heritage Committee applies to every site. Under criterion (i), it is a masterpiece of human creative genius: Angkor Wat in particular is a work of architecture and sculpture on a scale and with a precision that have few equals. Under criterion (ii), the temples influenced later architecture and planning across south-east Asia, as the Khmer kings' ideas and craftsmen moved with them.

Under criterion (iii), Angkor is an exceptional testimony to a civilisation that has disappeared as an empire but survives as a culture. Under criterion (iv), it is an outstanding example of a building type and landscape that illustrates a significant stage in human history, here the combination of the temple-mountain, the moat and the reservoir.

Taken together, these amount to a rare survival: not a single monument, but the monumental core of a low-density city, with its water system still legible on the ground.

Angkor lies on a flat plain just north of Tonlé Sap, the great lake whose water level rises and falls with the monsoon. The climate is tropical, with a wet season from about May to October and a hot, dry spell before it. The temples are built mainly from sandstone, much of it brought from the Kulen hills about 40 kilometres to the north-east, and from laterite, a rust-coloured stone used for foundations and walls.

The park is large: roughly 400 square kilometres, with the buffer zone beyond it. The main circuit, the loop of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm and a handful of neighbours, is about 25 kilometres round, and the outlying groups are further still. Siem Reap, the base for almost every visit, lies about six kilometres south of Angkor Wat.

You will walk further than you expect. Between the temples, a day's circuit easily means eight to 10 kilometres, much of it on uneven stone and some of it up steep, narrow steps with no handrail. Wear shoes with grip, and cover your shoulders and knees at the temples; guards do check.

Crowds are densest at Angkor Wat for sunrise and at Phnom Bakheng for sunset, and thinnest in the early afternoon, when most visitors retreat to air conditioning. That is also the hottest part of the day, so there is a trade-off, and the usual answer is a long lunch. Away from the main circuit you may have a corridor to yourself.

Touts and souvenir sellers cluster at temple entrances. A polite no is usually enough. Inside the larger temples, the stone corridors are cooler than the courtyards, and you will find you are spending more time in them than planned.

Most visitors spend three days, which is enough to see the main circuit, the outer temples and a sunrise without hurrying. One day is possible but rushed. Stay in Siem Reap, where the choice of rooms is wide, and arrange a tuk-tuk or car with a driver for the day rather than relying on ad hoc rides.

A guide adds value at the bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat and the Bayon, where the carvings tell stories that are hard to follow without help. Buy your pass at the official ticket centre, keep it with you, and expect it to be checked at the gates of each temple.

Angkor is part of the daily life of the Khmer people. Monks live and pray at Angkor Wat, Buddhist ceremonies still take place at several temples, and villages and rice fields lie within the park boundary. Khmer New Year, in mid-April, brings many Cambodian families to the temples to make offerings.

The classical Khmer dance known as apsara dance takes its name and its poses from the celestial dancers carved into Angkor's walls. Performances in Siem Reap range from careful, professionally trained productions to dinner-show adaptations, and they are worth choosing with some care. The Royal Ballet of Cambodia, which preserves the tradition, is itself on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage. Khmer is the language of the park and its villages, and a few words of greeting are warmly received.

Amok is the best-known dish: fish steamed in a paste of lemongrass, galangal and turmeric with coconut cream, traditionally in a banana-leaf cup. Lok lak is stir-fried beef with a lime and Kampot pepper dipping sauce. Nom banh chok, rice noodles in a fish-based green gravy with fresh herbs, is a breakfast dish eaten across Cambodia.

For snacks, look for num pang, the baguette sandwiches left by French rule, and for sweet things, anything made with palm sugar. Siem Reap's night markets and the streets around them have plenty to choose from; the café culture is notably better than the temple-gate sandwich suggests.