• E N R O U T E / / C O V E R S T O R Y
CAMBODIA PART III : FINDING RESPITE To escape the pulsating chaos of Cambodian street life , the haphazardness of daily living , I often fled to the serenity of one of many Buddhist pagodas and temples . I would hire a bicycle with no gears and a saddle rusted in place for dwarfs and wobble off into the passing population . I must have looked really cool , sweating profusely in the 33 ° C winter heat and 90 % humidity , dressed in black , with my camera backpack tightly strapped around me and the Italian girlfriend ( what I call my Manfrotto tripod ) clinging to all of us . But don ’ t for one moment think that I just toddled into the religious unknown without preparation .
Buddhism originated in India in the 6th Century BC and is now the predominant religion in the East , with about 400 million followers . While cycling , with gaining panache , I would recite a paragraph that I learnt : “ Buddhism is a path of practice and spiritual development leading to insight into the true nature of reality .”
Buddhist practices like meditation are a means of changing yourself in order to develop the qualities of awareness , kindness and wisdom . Most pagodas are set within large complexes , almost like monasteries , with monk hostels , workshops , dining halls and burial shrines . The long naga are truly beautiful , sculpted divine mythical beings , half human and half cobra . At times I was overcome by a
ALL PHOTOS © OBIE OBERHOLZER
Above : Lunchtime inside a Buddhist pagoda . Below : Obie and his ‘ Italian girlfriend ’.
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To escape the pulsating chaos of Cambodian street life , the haphazardness of daily living , I often fled to the serenity of one of many Buddhist pagodas and temples .
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One of the many happy places found by the photographer amongst gold-gilded Buddhas . sense of tranquility and serenity and could hold onto moments longer : moments of clarity , even of a brief timelessness . In the great pagodas I found smiling , gold-gilded Buddhas , extraordinarily shiny , even bling , lying , sitting and standing in a landscape of beauty . A kaleidoscope of colours stretched across the walls , as birds flew over ambling elephants , gurgling water streams and meditating maidens .
I held up my camera and my torch and tripod , smiling at the happy Buddha and an Eastern quotation : “ Time is like a river : you cannot touch the same water twice , because the flow that has passed will never pass again .” I ’ ve never been so happy photographing .
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