This 'Lost City' in Cambodia Is As Mesmerizing As Angkor Wat, With None of the Crowds

This was where the empire began, I was told — though from where I was standing it was hard to imagine the place as the center of anything, let alone a mighty kingdom. I was with my guide, Thon Varathana, on a crumbling stone pyramid in the middle of the Cambodian jungle. The cracks between the iron-red slabs under our feet erupted with vegetation, and we were encircled by a wall of lychee trees. No roads led there, just a maze of narrow forest tracks we had navigated on motorbikes, bouncing over exposed roots and dodging the creepers hanging over our path. Whatever this place had once been, nature had long since reclaimed it.

But then my sense of the landscape shifted. We clambered down from our perch and walked across the forest floor — or at least I assumed that’s what we were walking across. The ground at our feet was busy with convoys of black ants marching decisively through the tinder-dry leaf litter. Termite mounds rose from the sandy orange soil. We came to the edge of a steep slope, which at first I thought led down to even denser jungle 10 feet below. But Varathana urged me to look closer, and eventually I realized that I wasn’t on the ground at all but on a perfectly square platform that he said covered 2½ acres and formed a kind of giant concourse. 

As I took in the scale of this structure hidden beneath the trees, of which the stone pyramid formed just a small central section, the experience was a little like staring at one of those Magic Eye pictures and seeing an image materialize from a kaleidoscope of color. The temple I had just stepped down from was not some isolated relic. It was the centerpiece of an overgrown city. 

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.

That day arrived in 2008, when the French archaeologist Jean-Baptiste Chevance began to excavate Kulen in earnest. By 2012, Chevance and his Australian colleague Damian Evans were using lidar, a form of radar that penetrates the undergrowth to reveal hidden structures. Intensive analysis using this technology unveiled a dense urban grid — a network of neighborhoods, temples, reservoirs, and earthworks that made up the fabric of the ancient city. In late 2019, shortly before COVID closed Cambodia’s borders to visitors, the team published their research: they had finally uncovered the layout of Jayavarman’s capital, Mahendraparvata.

I visited the site last March, not long after Cambodia reopened and tourists began trickling back into the country. Almost all of them were headed to Angkor Wat, which at its pre-COVID height was luring more than 2.5 million people a year, turning its grounds into a sea of selfie sticks. Now that Kulen’s history is being unearthed, more of those visitors may begin making the effort to see it. The Cambodian government is building a new road to make the sites more accessible, and the country’s Archaeology & Development Foundation has been training local villagers as guides. But for now, hardly anyone goes there. If Angkor Wat is Cambodia’s most visited tourist attraction, Kulen is its hidden kingdom. 

What Kulen’s temples lack in scale they more than make up for in atmosphere. As Varathana and I stood among the trees, we looked back through the foliage to Rong Chen’s stack of mossy stone. The silence was broken only by a chorus of cicadas. Aside from the solitary guard sleeping away the sweltering afternoon in a hammock, we had the place to ourselves. 

Though Rong Chen is just one of about 40 stone temples on the mountain, secreted away in the jungle in various states of decay and entanglement, it is arguably the most important of the lot. Varathana, a rake-thin man in his mid-thirties with a delicate, singsong voice, explained why. “Pyramids symbolized royal power,” he said. “They were built for the worship of the king.” Until the ninth century, this region had been a patchwork of warring statelets. Jayavarman subdued them into an empire under his control. 

“So this is where Angkor started,” Varathana continued. “It was here, with this temple, that Jayavarman said, ‘I am in charge.’ ”

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We had set out early that morning from Siem Reap, the city that has grown up around Angkor Wat. It was only just beginning to reawaken from two years of COVID-related somnolence. Without tourism, there had been no work for many of the residents, and thousands had left.

Varathana was one of them. Until COVID struck, he had worked in the hotel business. But during the pandemic, he says, he “didn’t have a lot to do.” Archaeology turned from a hobby into an obsession. He started traveling all over the country to research temples, and even began meeting with a group of scholars. Cambodians have historically been less involved in archaeological research than foreigners. Among the 2 million people killed by Pol Pot, the genocidal communist dictator who ruled the country between 1975 and 1979, were almost all of its historians and archaeologists. Their knowledge died with them. “It is much easier to read about our history if you are French than if you are Cambodian,” Varathana told me with a hint of anger as we were driving toward Kulen. He said he wanted this knowledge to be more accessible to his compatriots, so he was involved in a program to translate research papers into Khmer. 

The drive took us through a landscape of rice fields dotted with villages of stilt houses, traditionally raised to protect them from flooding during Cambodia’s torrential wet season. After an hour, we reached the foot of the mountain and began to bump up the dirt road that led to the top. Although it is tempting for outsiders to think of Mahendraparvata as a lost city, its buildings remained alive as places of pilgrimage for Cambodians — even as the jungle reclaimed them and their history became obscure. The mountain is covered in natural springs that flow down to the plains below, irrigating fields of rice, mango, and cassava. These springs were probably one of the reasons Jayavarman II chose to build his capital on Kulen in the first place, and they have ensured that the mountain has retained its sacred status. Today Cambodians continue to pray and refresh themselves in the rivers and waterfalls.

Up on the mountain we stopped at the River of a Thousand Lingas, a pilgrimage site dating from the 11th century. Lingas are stone fertility symbols representing the god Shiva, carved in the form of priapic domes. Usually they are found in temples, where water is sanctified by being poured over the top. But here the entire riverbed is lined with them. “We all know this as a godly place,” Varathana said. “My grandmother used to come here and bring the water back to our house. It is said that the water can give us good luck.” 

At a nearby village we picked up motorbikes. Kulen is no place for novice riders like me, so I was riding pillion behind Thon Choi, a man who lives on the mountain and knows its knotty pathways as well as New Yorkers know the subway. For a few miles we followed the new, half-built road, riding past teams of workmen smoothing the fresh concrete and through clouds of black and yellow butterflies. Then we turned off and disappeared into the trees. The going was rough. When we came to a steep or rutted incline, Choi would tell me to dismount and walk while he gunned the engine and sped up the hill.

To me, our route was an impenetrable mystery. Every path, every thicket, every orchard looked the same. At various moments in Cambodian history, the mazelike quality of the mountain has lured people looking for a place to disappear. In 1979, as they were being driven from power, the Khmer Rouge retreated to Kulen. To defend themselves further they laid thousands of land mines all over the mountain. The recent archaeological digs were preceded by missions to clear the unexploded ordnance, which also opened up the site to visitors.

Eventually, as if out of nowhere, we arrived in a bright clearing containing one of the most spectacular ruins on the mountain. Damrei Krap is a temple that dates back to the late eighth century and consists of a trio of tiered brick towers: an intact central tower flanked by the unfinished stumps of its fellows. Today Cambodia is a Buddhist country, but between the fifth and 12th centuries its kings adopted Hinduism, which was brought here by traders from India. At Damrei Krap, the central temple is decorated with carved elephants that bow to Gaja Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of fortune who bestows the power of royalty. 

We stopped briefly to talk to the elderly guard, who offered us lychees cut from the surrounding trees. Then we dipped our heads under the doorway and stepped into the dark, dusty interior. Above us nesting bats flapped in the shadows. The stone plinth on the floor in front of us would once have been topped by a statue of the Hindu god Vishnu, but as with most of the sculptures that once filled the temples at Kulen, it has long since disappeared. The French transported some of the finest pieces back home, where they can now be seen in institutions like the Musée Guimet, in Paris. Then the Khmer Rouge and other political factions looted the country for cash, selling off thousands of Cambodian artworks to unscrupulous dealers who, in turn, sold them to international collectors. Fortunately, some pieces were taken to the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. But where the statues from Damrei Krap ended up, nobody knows. 

Varathana was a font of architectural arcana. Pointing to an archway, he told me it was reminiscent of those found in Champa, an ancient kingdom in what is now Vietnam. Along with other nearby states, Champa was incorporated into the early Angkor empire, and influenced the architecture that flourished in Jayavarman’s city. Other models came from as far away as Java, in modern-day Indonesia.

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The buildings in Mahendraparvata fused these disparate designs into a cosmopolitan “Kulen style.” As Varathana gave me a tour of the hill, he showed me temples decorated with carvings and others covered in weathered white stucco molded into floral patterns and curlicues. There were single structures, as well as clusters of smaller shrines. The mountain was where the empire’s artistic identity developed — an identity that would reach its apogee at Angkor Wat, which was built in the 12th century. Later, I called Chevance, who told me that he saw Kulen as “a laboratory of architectural forms that will come to be used again and again in the Angkor region.”

After a long day bouncing around on the back of a motorbike, it was a relief to return each night to Siem Reap, and the two hotels I stayed at in the city. Both were apt destinations for a trip steeped in Cambodian architecture. Jaya House is built in the New Khmer style, a Cambodian version of tropical modernism that flourished in the 1950s and 60s. The hotel’s restaurant has a ceiling shaped like a stepped pyramid — a reference to the temples of the Khmer empire — and opens onto one of several courtyards containing shaded pools. I also stayed in a private villa at Shinta Mani Angkor, which was designed by Bill Bensley, an American architect based in Thailand whose richly nostalgic hotels are always suffused with local culture. In the villa’s tiled courtyard, beside a small private pool, was a huge plaster relief that recalled the carvings at Angkor Wat.

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From there I ventured out to see how Kulen’s architecture evolved. I went to Koh Ker, about 75 miles from Siem Reap, to see the huge stepped pyramid erected in the 10th century by one of Jayavarman II’s successors. The kings were a rivalrous bunch — each built his own city in a bid to outdo his predecessor — and Koh Ker’s pyramid is a mammoth version of Rong Chen. Closer to home, one evening I took a tuk-tuk from my villa and headed into the Angkor Archaeological Park. This is an area stretching across some 154 square miles that contains Angkor Wat, along with the remains of several other capital cities from the age of the empire.

I wanted to visit a temple called Pre Rup, which dates back to the 10th century — not long after the king had moved down to the plains from the summit of Phnom Kulen. Looking across the parched grass on its grounds I could immediately see echoes of Rong Chen, where Varathana and I had started. Pre Rup consists of a huge, three-tiered pyramid made, like Rong Chen, from blocks of red stone. Standing on its upper platform are five tower temples similar to those at Damrei Krap. Pyramids like the one at Kulen are also called “mountain temples,” and at Pre Rup I could see why. It was as though the architects had built it to re-create Kulen itself.

I walked along the high walls at the foot of the pyramid, then climbed the staircase. The towers were guarded by stone lions, and their doorways were flanked by carvings of female attendants with long skirts and elaborate hairdos. From the top I peered out across the trees in the park, hoping to see Angkor Wat in the distance. If Pre Rup is an elaboration of the temples on the mountain, Angkor Wat is a majestic exaggeration — everything bigger, grander, and more ornate. As I searched the line of treetops in vain for its lotus-shaped turrets, I felt like I was standing on a bridge linking the earliest days of the empire with its zenith.

By the time Pre Rup was built, Mahendraparvata had lost its status as the royal capital, though it continued to function as a religious center. The following day, I returned to the mountain and got back on the motorbike — not to visit the temples this time, but to see a kind of jungle cave. Situated in a deep gully, the cave was hollowed out of a boulder the size of a house. In front of it was a pond containing a flat stone that would once have been a pedestal for a statue, along with several carved stones in the forms of elephants, serpents, and turtles. 

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To my untrained eye the site looked older than the temples we had seen earlier; in its rough-hewn simplicity it seemed almost prehistoric. Yet it was actually made between the 10th and 13th centuries — long after the royal architects had left the mountain. In their place came hermits, lured by Kulen’s sanctity, who lived in small groups, taught meditation to the pilgrims who followed them, and fashioned caves and devotional sites from the mountain landscape.

As I climbed out of the gully to get back to my bike, I noticed a rock covered in freshly melted wax. The stumps of the candles were still there, mounted in small foil holders. This damp corner of the hill, covered in roots, moss, and ferns, was still alive as a place of worship. The hermits who carved it out left hundreds of years ago. But for its modern pilgrims, the magic remains. 

Uncovering Cambodia’s Treasures

What to Do

Phnom Kulen National Park: This mountainous area near Siem Reap was the birthplace of the Khmer empire in the ninth century. The high plateau of Phnom. Kulen is the site of Mahendraparvata, a complex of temples now being uncovered from jungle overgrowth. 

Where to stay 

Jaya House: This Siem Reap hotel features Modernist architecture, elegantly monochrome rooms, and shaded courtyard swimming pools.

Shinta Mani Angkor Hotel: The Bensley Collection Pool Villas are an offshoot of this Siem Reap property, both designed by American architect Bill Bensley. Each two-story villa comes with a courtyard garden, a private pool, a roof terrace, and a butler.

How to Book

Edward Gibbons (e.gibbons@about​asia​travel.com; 855-63-760-190) and his team at AboutAsia Travel are based in Siem Reap. They can create a custom Cambodian itinerary and arrange for local and international archaeologists to show you the temples at Phnom Kulen, along with the greatest hits of Angkor Archaeological Park.

A version of this story first appeared in the March 2023 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "The Hidden Kingdom."