The temples of Cambodia, old and new

by Suhita Shirodkar

Siam Riep, Cambodia was incredible. But the three days and a half days I spent there is not enough to even scratch the surface of anything, or to form a picture, or say very much about the place. So I’ll post some of my sketches. And I’m going back for a longer trip. Sometime soon.

It was hard to sketch the ancient temples of Angkor: huge piles of rock, often dilapidates, weathered, worn and with complex, massive structures.  This is Ta Prohm, most famous for the huge ficus trees growing out of the structures.

These workers were part of a restoration project. Some built scaffolding around the structures, others painstakingly cleaned the remnants of carvings in the stone.

This monk was photographing the ruins with his phone. Yes, it’s the “ancient meets modern” cliché, but I had to sketch it. Everywhere you looked, great crumbling stone structures were so intertwined with the trees that the trees now held them up. It’s hard to imagine how these structures must have looked when they were living temples, all painted and adorned in gilded wood.

Angkor Thom is a temple with giant face towers There are over 200 of these massive faces on the towers, although many of them are barely recognizable as faces.

If many temples of Angkor are huge, complex, and really hard to capture, then Angkor Wat just takes it to another level. We’ve all seen this iconic structure in photographs before. But walking in through those gates to see the real thing is overwhelming. So I did some smaller vignettes in the inside courtyard, like this one of a monk in a small part of the temple that is now a living Buddhist temple.

Another few captures of the inner courtyard, filled with tourists and monks.

More of that monk at the temple and a huge statue of Buddha.

And finally, at almost sundown, as I walked out of the complex, I sketched these tourists by the ponds taking pictures of themselves with Angkor Wat reflected in the water.

Wat Preah Ang is a modern day Buddhist temples. The detailing on the roofs reminded me of flourishes at the end of calligraphic strokes. And the maximalist approach to decoration was a delightful change from the subdued palette of weathered rock at the Angkor temples.

An assortment of stupas in front of the temple.

One last sketch: the dormitories the monks live in, with saffron and red garments hanging out to dry.

There’s lots more sketches from Cambodia on my blog here.