In Malraux’s Footsteps

Arrival in Siem Reap, the gateway to the temples of Angkor. The very next day, we set out to meet them.

A first morning among the temples of the Grand Circuit. From the top of Pre Rup, a brick mountain raised in the tenth century, the eye plunges into courtyards where the first visitors are already walking. At Ta Som, smaller and more secret, a face tower rises out of the forest and devatas smile from the depths of their niches, in warm light.

A wooden boardwalk leads to Neak Pean, a sanctuary set in the middle of an ancient reservoir, where monks in saffron robes mingle with visitors and worshippers still leave offerings at the foot of the stones. Then Preah Khan, founded in 1191 by Jayavarman VII: on the causeway, giants hold back the body of the naga; inside, a succession of low doorways leads to a stupa struck by a shaft of light. The temple is half reclaimed by the forest, just as Malraux had dreamed it.

On the Terrace of the Leper King, in Angkor Thom, a carved face smiles half hidden by lichen. In the evening, from Phnom Bakheng, the oldest temple-mountain of Angkor, the five towers of Angkor Wat barely rise above the canopy, in the haze of the dry season.

Before dawn, we waited by the reflecting pools for the five towers to emerge against the paling sky. The largest religious monument in the world then mirrors itself, whole, in the still water. Then the galleries: the Churning of the Sea of Milk unrolling over dozens of metres, apsaras by the hundred, a standing Buddha beneath his parasol at the end of a corridor.

In the Kulen hills, a trail climbs through the forest to a river whose bed was carved in the eleventh century: Vishnu reclining on the serpent Ananta, deities, and hundreds of lingas showing beneath the clear water. At the end of the dry season, the current is little more than a trickle, and the stones lie almost bare.

This is where it all begins. In December 1923, André Malraux, Clara and their friend Louis Chevasson sawed off several blocks carved with devatas from this small pink-sandstone temple, consecrated in 967; arrested in Phnom Penh, they were tried and convicted, and the sculptures returned to the temple. A century later, we look for the famous devatas in their niches: astonishingly fine diadems and drapery, pediments chiselled like goldsmith’s work. One understands the fascination — and the temptation — that would become The Royal Way.

Early in the morning, a line of young monks in saffron robes walks between the guardian lions of Banteay Kdei, where an apsara dances on a pillar. Just opposite, the great reservoir of Srah Srang, the ‘royal bath’, stretches out beyond its stone lions and a lone sugar palm.

Ta Prohm is where Malraux’s Angkor makes the most sense: deliberately left as the first explorers found it, the temple is gripped by the roots of giant silk-cotton trees, fallen blocks pile up, jungle and stone have become one. A monk crosses the light between two pillars; another shelters under his yellow umbrella at the gate.

At the heart of Angkor Thom, more than two hundred serene faces gaze down from the towers of the Bayon, each turned towards a point on the horizon. Macaques have made these stone smiles their playground: they groom each other at the foot of a giant cheek, squabble, watch over their young.

For the last evening we went back to Angkor Wat, when the stone takes on the colour of honey and the sugar palms stand out against the towers. On the lawns, macaques and their young have taken over again; through a gallery window, the sun sets behind a palm tree.

A quiet capital on the banks of the Mekong, Vientiane blends colonial heritage and Buddhist devotion: Wat Si Saket, one of the oldest temples in the city, with its thousands of Buddhas lined up in the cloister; the Patuxai arch; the golden stupa of Pha That Luang, the nation’s symbol, and its great reclining Buddha. Everywhere, nagas hung with marigold garlands guard the stairways.

A few hours from Vientiane, the Phou Khao Khouay conservation area protects a vast sandstone forest massif. Its rivers slide over broad slabs of rock before tumbling into the greenery as waterfalls. Under the canopy, another world opens up to the macro lens: wild orchids by the dozen, yellow, purple or blood-red, clinging to trunks or rising from the leaf litter, and planthopper nymphs crowned with waxy filaments, like tiny feather dusters.

We arrive by train, on the new line that runs north through the mountains. A former royal capital at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan, Luang Prabang lives to the rhythm of its monasteries. At Wat Xieng Thong, founded in the sixteenth century, the roofs sweep almost to the ground and a glass mosaic depicts the Tree of Life on the rear wall; next door, the Red Chapel tells of village life in coloured fragments. In the evening, from the top of Mount Phousi, the Mekong fades into the haze.

Laos was once the ‘land of a million elephants’, Lane Xang. Upstream from Luang Prabang, on the banks of the Nam Khan, a sanctuary takes in Asian elephants. They eat, spray themselves, wade into the river beneath the karst ridges; a little further on, water buffalo wallow in the mud.

At dawn, monks file past in silence for tak bat, the alms round, while townspeople kneeling by the roadside offer them sticky rice. Saffron robes pass in front of still-sleeping façades; a few minutes later, the street is empty.

South of Luang Prabang, a turquoise river tumbles through the forest in a series of limestone pools; in a long exposure, the water turns to silk. At the entrance, a sanctuary takes in Asiatic black bears rescued from poaching.

The sun sets over the Mekong; then, within the grounds of the former Royal Palace, the masked dancers of Phralak Phralam — the Lao Ramayana — re-enact the battles of Rama, Hanuman and the demons. On the way out, the illuminated Haw Pha Bang glows in the night.

Across the border, the road leaves the forests of Laos and winds down into Tonkin, where French Indochina once had its capital. A first evening in Hanoi, in the lanes of the Old Quarter: plastic stools, lanterns, an old woman pedalling under her loads amid the scooters.

The first valley of the northern mountains: rice paddies of an almost electric green at the foot of karst peaks, and Thai villages of stilt houses. In the morning, mist rises from the valley floor, leaving only the ridges showing; later, in a smoky kitchen, a Hmong woman prepares a meal.

Further west, the Mộc Châu plateau is covered with tea plantations. The road then drops towards the Black River, the Sông Đà, turned into a vast reservoir dotted with floating fish farms; beneath the stilt houses, life goes on in the shade.

The terraced rice fields of Mù Cang Chải, carved by the Hmong over generations, sculpt entire mountainsides. In April, before transplanting, some terraces have just been flooded and mirror the sky; on others, still dry, a buffalo waits. Seen from above, they trace living contour lines.

The road crosses the Ô Quy Hồ Pass, one of the highest in the country, below Fansipan, under a stormy sky snagging on the peaks. Once a hill station founded by the French, Sapa has become a tourist town, but in the evening Hmong and Dao women still come down for the market, and little girls wear the embroidered dress of their village.

On the way back, a stop at Thác Bà Lake, created by a dam in the 1970s and scattered with more than a thousand islets. From the air, an archipelago of green patches on matte water; sunset, then morning mist from which the fishermen’s boats emerge.

Back in Hanoi for the last days. On ‘Train Street’, cafés line up a few centimetres from the rails, and everyone pulls back their chair as the train passes, horn blaring. At the Temple of Literature, founded in 1070 and dedicated to Confucius, the Khuê Văn Các pavilion watches over the courtyards; on West Lake, the Trấn Quốc pagoda raises its tower. The Tonkin of Malraux’s day has become a bustling capital, yet its streets hold the memory of every era.