Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
From here, you can climb one of the steep stairways that lead straight up the temple's
three uppermost tiers to reach the
top of the pyramid
, more than 21m above the
ground, and the five sanctuary towers, dedicated to Shiva.
Ta Prohm
The jungle-smothered ruins of
TA PROHM
are one of the most evocative of all Angkor's
ancient monuments - its courtyards and terraces half-consumed by the encroaching
forest, with shrines and pavilions engulfed by giant strangler figs and the massive roots
of kapok trees clinging to walls, framing doorways and prising apart giant stones. The
temple richly fulfils every Indiana Jones-cum-Tomb Raiderish romantic cliché you could
possibly imagine - a uniquely serendipitous combination of human artifice and raw
nature working together in accidental harmony, with impossibly picturesque results.
That, at least, is what the films and photographs suggest - the reality is slightly less
romantic. Crowds are a serious problem, while massive ongoing restoration means that
parts of the temple currently resemble an enormous building site as conservationists
attempt to walk the impossible tightrope between preserving Ta Prohm's original
lost-in-the-jungle atmosphere while preventing it from being obliterated entirely by the
surrounding forest. It's a magical place, even so, assuming you're not expecting to be
left alone to commune with nature, and especially if you can time your visit to avoid
the worst of the coach parties (see box below).
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Brief history
Constructed by Jayavarman VII around 1186, Ta Prohm was a
Buddhist monastery
dedicated to Prajnaparamita, and would once have housed a statue of this deity in the
image of the king's mother (inscriptions say that a further 260 holy images were installed
in surrounding chambers and niches). The monastery accommodated twelve thousand
people, who lived and worked within its grounds, while a further eighty thousand were
employed locally to service and maintain the complex. Ta Prohm also supplied provisions
and medicines to the 102 hospitals that Jayavarman instituted around the kingdom.
The site
As at other temple-monasteries such as the roughly contemporaneous Banteay Kdei
and Preah Khan, Ta Prohm follows the archetypal pattern of the so-called Angkorian
“flat” temple
(see box, p.163) - although myriad collapsed walls and accumulated
rubble have significantly blurred the neatness of the original plan.
The majority of visitors arrive
from Ta Keo
while on the Petit Circuit, approaching
from the west, but if you use the track off the road northwest of Banteay Kdei, you can
enter
from the east
as was originally intended, and which is how we describe it here.
Entering the site from the east, you pass through a collapsed gopura, from where a
path heads some 500m through forest to reach the temple itself to reach the main
CROWDS AT TA PROHM
In tourist terms,
Ta Prohm
(along with Angkor Wat and the Bayon) is one of Angkor's three big
sights, and as such gets overwhelmed with visiting coach parties on a regular basis
throughout most of the day. Meanwhile, the relative smallness of the site means that
negotiating your way through the ruins' narrow corridors and doorways in peak hours (roughly
10am-2pm) has all the charm of a visit to a major metropolitan subway station at the height of
rush hour. The whole depressing spectacle probably isn't why you came to Cambodia, and is
best avoided, if possible. The
best times to visit
are in the early morning (between 7am and
9am) or in the late afternoon (after 4pm). Both early morning and late afternoon also offer the
best photographic opportunities, as the light lowers and softens through the surrounding
trees.
