Baos Neak & Neakta Temple

Hello and welcome again to Forgotten Temples. Now what you see in front of you is one of those jungle tracks that I traverse to come and bring you these videos. Now this is a great one. Notice that it's broad enough to get a bike down and there's no streams, huge boulders or drop-offs. The drop-offs literally frighten me horribly but this one is a great one and where it leads us to is a lovely little temple just up here and here is the first of our temples in this video. As I say we'll be doing two and this is Niktar. Now there's not an awful lot to say about him because well all that history has been lost to time. What I can tell you of course is where we are. We're at the Kulen mountain range and here was once a mighty city of King Javavarman. His palace was found here only a few years ago by using lidar. Now this ancient city used to sprawl for 40 square kilometers and we're looking at a remarkable piece of engineering. Obviously one of the earlier temples about the 8th and 9th century because we could see the use of the brickwork but it wasn't just these temples that they built here. It was also their unbelievable command of water because there's like valleys here and they dammed those to contain the water and then they could distribute it and they could up their rice yield. They could then sell that and create this mighty city but as I say finding these temples now is a herculean task. There's no roads, there's barely paths and almost nobody comes this way to this lost ancient capital and that's a shame. But at least we can tread these roads now, well these paths, relatively safely because it wasn't that long ago that the Khmer Rouge had control of this area and if you wander off those few paths there are then you sir are a fool because this place is littered with landmines. Now look at him against that lovely piercing blue sky and what we're going to do, we're not going to jog around, we're going to have a quick look inside because there's another temple my guide tells me not so far away. Well we have to clamber up to get into it and I can see already that once here was a mighty Shiva linga honouring that wonderful god Shiva and as always it has been looted. I have discovered one intact linga in this actual complex but here alas not. He would have sat right here, right in the yoni which represents the female's lady parts and the Shiva represents the gentleman's lady part, no sorry the gentleman's gentleman's parts. But what we can see is even after a thousand years this thing is still pretty much straight and true. Now it's only a short walk to get to our second temple, our first was just there and it is here and it is a state of devastation and disrepair but there are a couple of things that are very important that I wish to show you. Now the first is it's always interesting to me to see how these places came together. Now what we can see here is what's called a debris field. These are all the ancient bricks that were fired on this very mountain because I've just visited a kiln but what we can see is the engineering skills and this is worth getting closer to. Now when you're building these temples you don't want them to fail of course and what is interesting to me is the precision here. If I take this at this angle, I put my hand in to give you an idea as to size, this is called a tenon and mortar joint I believe. I haven't done one since I was 12 years old at a British boarding school but the precision is very apparent there but if we go to here, have a look at this, it is as straight as an arrow and you know what is also very strange is this stone is exceptionally smooth. The temple itself is of course way beyond its previous glory and there's a mystery here. Once in here was a statue of a Hindu god but he is gone and oddly the plinth where he stood is out here and again we see this incredible stonework. I mean look they haven't just put these grooves in, you need to look a bit closer. Look at this curve, this is really difficult to do with an instep, another instep, an instep, an instep within an instep and an instep within an instep within an instep. I mean this is really complicated and this is exceptionally hard stone. Now due to equipment failure, i.e. these jungle paths have literally shaken the holy crap out of my equipment, this is the best angle I can give you and yes there's not a lot to see with these two but believe me the adventure, the journey is all you need and these items, these artifacts are the bonus because once stood here, just here, a mighty god and this was his realm, his domain. Now all lost to the jungle, it's a place of absolute serenity. As always this has been Mr B, please like, subscribe and comment and as always I wish you absolutely nothing but the very best. You take good care now.