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HISTORY OF BIG SUR COAST

  A new dawn:              Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities.  Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete.               The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic.  The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades.  Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell.  By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops.              ...
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ANGKOR WAT

 

A heavenly quest:

Angkor Wat


                      A tour around Angkor Wat inevitably involves a step-by-step journey – inwards and upwards – towards the central tower.  Starting at the moat, on the west side of the complex, the way leads through the west entrance, one of several gopuras, or gateways, in the wall (including one at each compass point).  The entrance opens onto a second causeway, lined with nagas, that continue past libraries and reflecting pools and across a raised terrace.

                        The space  on either side of the terrace was occupied by original palace and city of Angkor.  Built of perishable materials, both have been destroyed by centuries of decay.

                          The temple itself consists of three rectangular walled enclosures, one inside another and each on a higher level than the previous one.  On of the west side of the temple, a cloister links the outermost enclosure to the second one.  This cloister was once home to more than a thousand images of Buddha donated by pilgrims, and its walls bear inscriptions recording pious deeds.

                          In the second enclosure, flights of steps rise steeply to the four towers that mark the corners of the third, and the highest, level.  These corner towers are smaller versions of the central lotus-bus-shaped tower.  The palace’s complex layout, with its many terraces, cloisters, courtyards, decorated pediments, pavilions and flights of steps from one level to the next, can be interpreted as representing the difficult journey up to heaven.

                          Swept by an intermittent breeze, the central tower marking the final stage of this skyward journey soars some 60m (200ft) above the plain, where cicadas whir in the trees.  It is a good place to linger for a while, enjoying the view over the plain and the jungle,  which is sprinkled with other ancient buildings, and reflecting on the god-kings of a time long past and their anonymous temple builders.

Location: Krong Siem Reap, Cambodia

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