Also see: our Cambodia Photography Tour – Temples of Angkor Wat & Beyond
In the heart of Cambodia is the largest fresh-water lake in South-East Asian tropical expanse – Tonle Sap. A large number of people depend on the lake to make a living, benefiting from a bounty of fish available in its waters. They dwell on the lake-bed, either on houses on stilts or boat-houses that can float and relocate at will. Water levels on Tonle Sap rise and fall drastically between wet and dry seasons, which means that stilts have to be high and floating houses tend to relocate with season. Here is a collection of images from the settlements on Tonle Sap Lake.
Click on any photograph to see larger images.
Houses on stilts – a floating village on Tonle Sap Lake
Boats of all kind – motorized, rowed, small, large are the primary means of transport for the floating villages.
When you are still not big enough to own a boat of your own, you make do with what is available!
A village with houses on the boat. The entire village may shift locations based on the tide levels. You come back another day and the village would have disappeared!
A lady rows a boat at a floating village. Notice all the criss-crossing power lines on the poles? For a wandering village, infrastructure available is very acceptable.
Building the lifeline of the lake…
Houses on boats
A market comes home… on a boat, of course.
A stand-and-row variety of boat at a floating village.
Life on the lake.
Children play at a village at the edge of the lake.
Monks making way to their monastery in the middle of the lake.
A lady on her way out of her house on stilts.
School bus!
A lady rows past houses on stilts.
For villages that have to be on water, they are surprisingly well-equipped. Homes are connected to power-grid, everyone has his/her own private transport (there isn’t much choice here) and water supply, of course, is just outside the house in all directions! There are shops, schools and monasteries in these villages too. They are just a regular villages; just replace earth with water.
We travel to these villages–both the ones on stilts as well as the floating ones–during our photography tour to Cambodia. This tour is a mix of all good things that Cambodia has to offer to a visitor – the temples of Angkor Wat, the rural life, green landscapes with carpet of paddy fields and life on the lake. There is no better way to see Cambodia, and led by a photography mentor, make beautiful images along the way.