Travel 008 : Cambodia : 25 Dec : Kbal Spean

It is Christmas day.  I could able to wake up almost within my schedule (well still 7.30am).  after breakfast, I made to my tuk-tuk at about 9.30am.  Today, I want to start with possibly a most remote of the attractions here and also as a change to all the temples and ruins, it is a small mountain and waterfall.  Kbal Spean (River of thousand lingas) is located about 50 KM from Siam Reap.  As usual I discussed a rough itinerary for today with the tuk-tuk guy and he was hesitantly told that as this is of longer distance, his day charge will be 25 dollars instead of 15 dollars.  After two days of spending time with him, I am fine with this and started.  After more than an hour and the usual pass-punching along the way, reached Kbal Spean and started walking upwards.  From the place where tuk-tuk dropped me to the river that I wanted to visit, it is 1.5 KM uphill and the distance is clearly displayed every hundred meters.  It is a mix of plain paths, rocky climbing, one wooden staircase where the rocks are not safe.  Though it is uphill, I guess an eight year old can go all the way up and down with a little encouragement.  It took me slightly less than an hour to reach up with some breaks in between for water and snacks.  

The first place I stopped (for sight-seeing) is the natural stone bridge.  The water stream falls down at the small rock at one side of the bridge and flow below the bridge.  On the other side of the bridge, we cannot see any water stream as the water runs below the rocks and appear only a bit far.  At the small rack where the water stream is falling, there are sculptures of Vishnu in the lying down pose with Lakshmi and Brahma.  Also found are Shiva and Parvathi on the Nandi.

Many parts of the remaining rocks are carved in such a way that they appear like a group of Lingas (and so the name River of thousand Lingas).

If one doesn't read any kind of guidebook about this place, it is possible that they just see this place and start walking downwards.  We can walk a bit along the downstream and so I did.  Further down, we can see two more Vishnu carvings.

Walking beyond that, at a place where the water is very shallow, we can see the actual rocks below the water stream. There is the main Shivalinga carving and hundreds of Lingas at the river bed below the stream.

Further down, there is a nice little waterfall which pretty much marks the end of what I have to see.  From the waterfalls, I reached back to the main path along another loop (not by coming back upstream to the stone bridge) and descend downwards back to my tuk-tuk.  Though the up-climbing is a bid humid and sweaty, at the top, it is cool and windy.  I can really feel a difference as I was visiting temple after temple for the past two days.