Stories of a large rock-face carving of the Buddha on Kangva hill, in Cambodia’s Pursat province, had long been told in the village at the foot of the hill, but no one alive remembered seeing it.
Local legends of giant snakes and earth spirits, or neak ta, had largely kept villagers away from the low hills that straddle the border of Pursat and Kampong Chhnang provinces, on the western banks of Tonle Sap lake. That changed last year on the morning of November 27.
“Bun Sopheap was scrambling over the rocky hill with four women from the village when he saw it,” says Eng Kunthea, boss of the Cambodian People’s Party in Krakor district, Pursat province.
