The BIG day arrived and I was off to see sunrise at Angkor Wat followed by a bike tour to key temples. Going on a bike tour was excellent because the guide took me along jungle paths were few ventured, mostly locals. I felt like I had the whole park to myself and was not in the hords of people at the main entrances. Photos do not do justice to being there but I tried.
I will go back by tuk tuk to see other temples further out and the last visit, I bought a 3 day pass, will be by bicycle. Now I know to look for side trails.
Some facts I borrowed from sacredsites.com
Hearing about the Draco constellation and the layot of Angkor intrigued me and that is how I came across this stie.
Next post will be about Siem Reap.
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There are two great complexes of ancient temples in Southeast Asia, one at Bagan in Burma, the other at Angkor in Cambodia.
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The temples of Angkor, crafted by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD, represent one of humankind's most astonishing architectural achievements.
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From Angkor the Khmer kings ruled over a vast domain, which reached from Vietnam to China to the Bay of Bengal. The structures one sees at Angkor today, more than 100 stone temples, are the surviving remains of a grand religious, social and administrative metropolis whose other buildings - palaces, public buildings, and houses - were built of wood and are long since decayed and gone.
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Conventional theories presume the lands where Angkor stands were chosen as a settlement site because of their strategic military position and agricultural potential. Other scholars however, believe the geographical location of the Angkor complex and the arrangement of its temples was based on a planet-spanning sacred geography from archaic times.
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Using computer simulations it has been shown that the ground plan of the Angkor complex – the terrestrial placement of its principal temples - mirrors the stars in the constellation of Draco at the time of spring equinox in 10,500 BC. While the date of this astronomical alignment is far earlier than any known construction at Angkor, it appears that its purpose was to architecturally mirror the heavens in order to assist in the harmonization of the earth and the stars.
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Both the layout of the Angkor temples and iconographic nature of much its sculpture are also intended to indicate the celestial phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes and the slow transition from one astrological age to another.
