ANGKOR
The hype: a millennium ago, when the world’s most blinging temples were still erected to gods, not mammon, Angkor was Manhattan Island — the kick-ass capital of a subcontinent, its skyline of super-intricate pyramids and pinnacles crafted by the bloodthirsty god-kings of the Khmers in a 500-year orgy of royal one-upmanship. There were hundreds of them — part cathedral, part palace, part jungle fortress — and they’re still intact. They can be visited for £10.50, or about half the price of a day at Alton Towers.
The reality: Angkor old hands were desperate to spoil it for me. Since Pol Pot popped off, they said, tourists have laid siege. Last year, 700,000 people went, and the neighbouring town of Siem Reap has bloated from two hotels in 1990 to 72 today. You’re too late, they muttered, the glory’s gone.
But I always travel with my hip-flask half full, and I’d found my own figures. The Angkor complex crumbles across 155 square miles, the official site map has 74 temples to choose from and the whole lot is still smothered in subtropical forest. How crowded could it possibly be?
On the two-mile neon highway from Siem Reap, I’m starting to fret. It’s not so much the sight of Angkor Jackpot Amusements and the Chai Massage and Stone-carving Show at the roadside. It’s my guide, Tra, slagging off the South Koreans, who recently became Angkor’s top visiting tourist nation: “They barge, they don’t respect others. At least the Japanese only bring cameras. The Koreans bring their own guides — who bring megaphones.”
The ticket checkpoint is a starting grid of taxis, minibuses, motos, bicycle rickshaws and rather romantic remorques — motorbikes hitched to
candy-striped buggies. Every kind of temple-touring transport you can imagine, bar helicopter or elephant (though if you phone ahead, you can do Angkor by those, too).
And we’re off, into the green acres of parkland that couch the temples proper, and straight for the gates of Angkor Wat, zenith of Khmer achievement, the world’s biggest, pinkest, most razzle-dazzling religious monument. Tra turns off the engine, leaving just the background crackle of jungle. There’s nobody else here. It’s flummoxing.
“This is the east entrance,” he says. “The back door. I always come in this way, to get ahead of the crowds.”
Those iconic lotus-bud towers loom. Maybe this approach doesn’t have the knock-’em-dead drama of the west gate, with snake-guarded Naga Causeway, the one on all the postcards. But I’ll get that view on exit — and it does mean we’re among the first to ferret out the temple’s secrets. I can’t get enough of the 500yd-long carvings of Hindu myths and monsters along the southern esplanade — a 12th-century Guernica of bulgy-eyed demons doing unspeakable things to sinners in inch-deep relief, still visceral after 900 years.
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Angkor Wat’s topmost sanctuary is reached by a vertiginous stairway, cliff-face steep, so you have to scrabble up hand over hand to reach it — deliberately humbled, like the ancients before their gods. At the summit, I find barefoot boys at prayer, and flyblown offerings of rice and vegetables: it’s thrilling to find the temples are still in daily devotional use.
But it’s 11am, it’s getting busier, and from down below comes the clamour of Hawaiian-shirted Koreans screeching “Cheese!” across the Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas. Even here, though, in Angkor’s most touristed temple of all, it’s never too difficult to duck out of someone else’s photo into the labyrinthine chambers below, pitted with smoky dens where bats squeak and bald crones grope towards you through the murk with incense sticks. I can’t see how that experience can have changed much in centuries.
So, still got it? Even without Tra’s trickery, definitely. And that was just Angkor Wat, the headline act on my three-day bill of empire-exploring. The breathtaking scale of Angkor’s temple compound means you can find plenty of it all for yourself — and maybe, if you’re lucky, a moment of spiritual communion with the god-kings.
If I had my time again. . . I’d sign up Tra like a shot. His full name is Tuon Sopheaktra: if your tour company can’t hire him, try a local operator, Hanuman (00 855 23 218356, www.hanumantourism.com).
Who goes there? Audley Travel (01869 276360, www.audleytravel.com) can tailor a 10-day trip, with four nights in Siem Reap, two in Phnom Penh and three on the beach at Sihanoukville, from £1,735pp, including flights and excursions. Or try Wild Frontiers (020 7736 3968), www.wildfrontiers.co.uk).
Vincent Crump
MACHU PICCHU
The hype: a lost city, high above the jungles of darkest Peru, sanctuary to a fabulously rich extinct civilisation — you don’t get more Indiana Jones than this. Rediscovered by the explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911, the sacred city was occupied for less than a century before its mysterious abandonment. Now, according to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Machu Picchu is “a trip to the serenity of the soul, to eternal fusion with the cosmos. There we feel our own fragility”.
The reality: on a saddle between the peaks of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas is half an hour from the tourist town of Aguas Calientes and 80 miles north of Cuzco. Sounds remote, but more than 300,000 visit each year, arriving by train, bus, helicopter and shanks’s pony. Some stay in the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, a five-star motel at the gates of the ruins.
After camping on the Inca Trail, I’d planned to arrive on foot, but I was thwarted by a landslide, so I arrived on the bus with the Hicksville Weight Watchers. As I stepped onto the tarmac at the gates of the ruins, I smelt an unmistakable odour that was neither orchid nor jacaranda nor roasted maize, but greasy cheeseburger from the fast-food joint in the Machu Picchu shopping plaza. A dreadlocked media-studies graduate from Croydon, in Quechua Indian garb, who said she was the reincarnation of an Inca noblewoman, begged for cigarettes as I queued. An Argentine photographer told me a backpacker had advised him to avoid the tourists by arriving at dawn. “So I came and there were hundreds of backpackers here,” he said. “What’s the difference?”
The magic was in danger of vanishing, but then I lost the crowds by taking the precipitous path to the Huayna viewpoint. Suddenly the spell was cast and I was entranced by the sheer impossibility of Machu Picchu. This is a city built atop a mountain by men who hadn’t even worked out the wheel, yet they constructed buildings such as the Temple of the Sun, with windows perfectly aligned to illuminate the inner chamber with the first rays of the summer solstice; and the Room of the Three Windows, its walls of polished, hand-hewn blocks so exact in their placement that you can’t slip a knife between the joints. Such perfection, precision, exactitude: it’s bewildering.
The Incas left no written records, so their motives and methods are open to speculation. “Tell me this wasn’t built with laser guidance,” challenged an otherwise sensible-looking Swede, running his hands over a wall unmatched by modern architecture. The Croydon priestess was dancing like Janis Joplin on mescaline, whirling over an “earth energy source so much stronger than the one at Glastonbury”. I found a quiet spot far off on the maize terraces and left her to it.
So, still got it? Despite aliens, undernourished backpackers, overweight tourists, and hormonal gap-year kids snogging around every corner, Machu Picchu remains magical enough to entrance the most cynical soul. In 1911, Bingham wrote: “In the variety of its charms and the power of its spell I know of no place in the world which can compare.” Me neither.
If I had my time again. . . I would walk the Inca Trail again. The overture of Inca culture, history and topography is essential to maximise your sense of wonder at the finale. To arrive by train or bus is like turning up at the opera just to hear the fat lady sing.
Who goes? Hike the Inca trail to Machu Picchu with Exodus (0870 240 5550, www.exodus.co.uk); from £1,402pp, including flights, hiking permits and entrance tickets. Or take the train from Cuzco; Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk) has a seven-night trip from £1,395pp, including flights.
Chris Haslam
Page 3: Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza
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TAJ MAHAL
The hype: poor Mumtaz Mahal. Having given Shah Jahan 13 offspring, she died offspringing the 14th. Grieving Jahan vowed to fulfil her prophetic dream of a “white palace rising above the water”, and 20,000 crack craftsmen toiled for 22 years. No wonder 3m people visit annually — it’s the ultimate tomb-cum-love shack.
The reality: camel-drawn carts, dozing cows and fume-spewing rickshaws clog the road from Delhi to Agra, home of the Taj. It’s four hours of horn-thumping scrummage, and the statistics are grim: one in 10 of the world’s prangs happens in India. But after 160 miles of perforating the upholstery with my fingernails, the inevitable hadn’t happened. Unlike the woman for whom it was constructed, I survived to see India’s earthly take on paradise.
Agra, however, isn’t journey’s end. A fume-free zone around the Taj means a squeeze onto a battery-powered bus for the last half mile. At the East Gate, an asteroid belt of trinket touts awaits: you make eye contact, you lose, unless you always wanted a 3in replica of the palace in a snow storm. My 750 rupees duly paid, it was time to start the queuing proper. English politeness deprived me of the correct use of my elbows, and the barrier seemed to mysteriously draw further away. I was getting Agra-phobia.
Relief came a few paces later. Bags searched, frisk over, I decompressed in the immense Chowk-i Jilo Khana courtyard, lined with red sandstone rooms that were built, with remarkable prescience, by Shah Jahan as accommodation for all who would come to admire his labour. Then I looked up.
The Taj stops your heart. You see it framed tantalisingly in the distance, all creamy and serene. Although scores of visitors are sucked towards this vision like tea leaves down a plughole, the draw is so potent, it’s as if you’re suddenly alone.
From this viewpoint, the Taj is a tease. You get a glimpse of the unique, symmetrical beauty, which is all the more pulse-quickening for remaining largely out of view. So the worst thing you could do now is simply tramp through. Ram, my guide, shows me the precise places to stop, down to the last inch. At this point, he says, the domed Rauza alone is visible, while here the minarets are perfectly framed as well. It’s a bit like being shown around the Louvre by Dan Brown — cryptic delights unfolding as the Taj reveals itself just as the unknown architect intended.
For me, this was the best bit. Under the dome, the finer details (marble screens carved like doilies, chisel-defying artwork, the musty mausoleum) were impressive, but left my sentiments cold as marble. The Taj is like clever dentistry — for best results, stand back.
So, still got it? Yes — just. Even on a sweaty, crowded afternoon, the towering Taj still weaves her spell, turning all tourists into awestruck specks.
If I had my time again. . . I’d visit at full moon. From two nights before until two after, a special ticket (750 rupees, bought from 22 Mall Road) permits restricted numbers to view the complex after dark.
Who goes there? TransIndus (020 8566 2729, www.transindus.co.uk) has a nine-day tour of Jaipur, Ranthambore National Park and Agra, from £1,017pp. Or try Bales Worldwide (0870 241 3208, www.balesworldwide.com).
Simon Hacker
PYRAMIDS OF GIZA
The hype: if they ever decipher the Pharaoh family motto, the hieroglyphics definitely won’t spell out: “You can’t take it with you, you know.” The world’s greatest mausoleums set a standard for posthumous self-deification and mob-cowering monumentalism for 4,500 years. With every new nation that learns to love travel, the last of the original Seven Wonders receives ever more visitors — the camel drivers are currently learning Mandarin.
The reality: “I’ve never seen it this quiet before,” mutters my guide as we drive into the pyramid complex. I count 20 minibuses and half a dozen coaches, and wonder what on earth she’s going on about. A tourist destination for longer than other national icons have been standing, the Pyramids, it seems, are never truly peaceful.
The necropolis of three giant pyramids and the almost equally celebrated Sphinx is surrounded on three sides by the suburbs of Africa’s largest city, but Cairo’s traffic noise dies away as we reach the Giza hilltop, step out and stare up. Even in their eroded state, there’s an essential perfection to the giants before us, 450ft jewels of art and ambition. It’s a reverential moment — until a chap sneaks up on my blind side and tries to sell me a plastic statue of the scene.
Ah, yes, the hawkers. Allowed into the site by the guards on the reasonable grounds that you’re rich and they’re poor, a small army of salesmen try to shift postcards, Sphinxes and, of course, camel rides. With an Arabic-speaking guide to the fore and tourist police all around, I found the touts polite and far from tiresome (though the few self-guiding backpackers we met had less warm feelings).
Camel rides rejected, we take a walk, learning the conflicting theories of how the giants above us were created and imagining the blinding splendour of their original smooth finish. Next, though, there’s an illustration that fame and magic often fail to coincide: the most popular pyramid pilgrimage, the tunnel into one of Khufu’s caverns, is a fetid, claustrophobic, chaotic waste of time; but the solar boat, buried nearby to carry the dead across the Nile, is a miracle of carpentry and archeology, which I have all to myself for 20 stunned, silent minutes.
But it’s the Sphinx that most surprises. From one angle, it’s stunning, a lone desert sentinel backed by the pyramids, but from the other 359, it’s besieged by touts and tarmac, and about a depressing as a bad zoo. It was a relief to head back uphill to say farewell to the big three, to try to seal as much memory as possible onto that four-millennium-old boast — I’ve seen the Pyramids.
So, still got it? It‘s up to you. Dedicating the time and money to a Cairo crammer course in Egyptology is worth every penny, and would have to fit
in Giza — but the thousands who come here to gawp, snap and leave probably remember the heat and hassle more.
If I had my time again. . .I’d read more and worry less. Cairo is all about tour guides and taxi drivers — the former all have MAs in Egyptology, but if you’ve not boned up on the basics beforehand, they’ll only give you the Fisher-Price facts; the latter have PhDs in cunning and confusion, and, frankly, the only way to stay sane is to relax and enjoy the ride, all the way to their brother’s carpet shop.
Who goes? Kuoni (01306 747008, www.kuoni.co.uk) has four nights, B&B, at the well-placed Le Méridien Pyramids; from £484pp, flying from Heathrow. A guided tour that includes Giza costs £27pp.
Brian Schofield
