via Travel + Leisure, 21 February 2023: Travel piece on Phnom Kulen, the sacred mountain just north of Siem Reap and the Angkor Archaeological Park.
Rong Chen, as this temple is known, occupies the summit of Phnom Kulen, a high plateau that rises from the flatlands of northern Cambodia. It is to Kulen — the name means “lychee” — that historians trace the origins of the Khmer empire that ruled over much of Southeast Asia in medieval times and built Angkor Wat, the world’s largest monument to religious devotion, which lies about 30 miles southwest.
Archaeologists have known for more than a century that the seat of the empire was on Kulen, after a French epigrapher deciphered a stone inscription in what is now northern Thailand that described the coronation of Jayavarman II, the king who founded the empire in 802. French explorers had catalogued the ruins at Kulen in the late 19th century, and the site was mapped between the 1930s and 60s. But compared with the dazzling scale of Angkor Wat — and the dozens of other temples that lie near it in the Angkor Archaeological Park — the overgrown ruins on Kulen seemed small and inaccessible. The job of digging there was left for another day.
Source: This ‘Lost City’ in Cambodia Is As Mesmerizing As Angkor Wat, With None of the Crowds
