Why Do We Travel?
An Anecdotal Analysis Of Everyone’s Favorite Conversation Topic
Visiting the Angkor Wat was a sublime experience: a magnificent display of mankind’s ability to inspire awe through piety, devotion, and sheer immensity. Its grandeur, towering over Siem Reap, was unmatched, and when I first saw it at sunrise, enshrouded in the clouds with the sun gently rising over its right shoulder, I could think of nothing more than Mount Olympus — the mythological palace of the Ancient Greek Gods. It’s a temporal monument of unrestrained majesty, built not of stone but of memory and time: of man’s ability to inspire and also to destroy, his insatiable ambition and his capacity for evil.
Or at least, that’s what LonelyPlanet would tell you.
It fails to mention, of course, that almost half of the once massive pinnacles of the Angkor Wat now litter the ground as rubble, or that the once verdant gardens surrounding it are now overgrown grass caked with mud and mosquitoes, or that even at 5:30 in the morning, the air is scalding and choked with humidity. It leaves out how the constant baking sun is worsened by the frequent tropical downpours, which saturate the unpaved walkways into a watery muck that seeps into your shoes and prunes your toes inside your sodden socks.
