Phnom Kulen National Park

This guide to Phnom Kulen National Park near Siem Reap climbs to the mountain once called Mahendraparvata, where in the year eight hundred two a little-known ruler named Jayavarman staged a ceremony with a brahmin priest said to know the lore of magic power. It follows what that ritual claimed for him and for the Khmer people, and how a later king had the riverbed below carved with hundreds of small stone lingas to bless the water flowing toward Angkor. Stand by the waterfall where that same river still runs today.