Bikaner: Rats, rats, rats

I know I am not a normal tourist. The more offbeat and unusual an attraction is, the more I am drawn to it. In Paris, I made the obligatory trip to the Eiffel Tower, but it was the Sewer Museum that excited me most. My friend, AJ, still complains about a day sightseeing in LA that ended up in Watts (aka 'the hood') to see towers made of rebar and broken tile that had been erected by a local eccentric. I have dragged a carload of co-workers to the Funeral Museum in Houston. I live for this kind of stuff.

Knowing this, it is no surprise how excited I was at the chance to visit the Karni Mata temple in Deshnoke. It is better known as the "rat temple", for its 20,000 or so furry rodents hanging out waiting to be fed and/ or venerated. It alone made up for at least 60% of all the pre-India discussions I had with friends and colleagues, who alternated between amused and appalled. After promising everyone Facebook status updates, I still had to wait for the mid-way point of our trip, stop #6, Bikaner to make this plan a reality.

Having waited this long, I was not keen to put it off any longer than I had to. Our train pulled into Bikaner at 5am, we were in our too-cool-for-words hotel, Bhairon Vilas by 6am and by 7am, I was shivering in a tuk-tuk on a thirty kilometer ride out to Deshnoke. I arrived to find a French group preparing to enter. As with all other Hindu temples, everyone must remove their shoes at the doorway. This group was prepared, a little too prepared, I'd say. They all had socks on, which should have been enough, but they went above and beyond, adding bright blue plastic hospital booties over their socks.

I considered buying a pair of socks myself from any of the vendors outside the gate, but in the end opted for a more authentic experience and bought rat food instead. I was concerned about offending the worshippers, people who believe the rats are sacred reincarnations of their ancestors and are not squeamish about walking barefoot on 20k rats' worth of holy pee and poo.  I figured I could join them. Probably not my wisest decision, that floor was nasty. I have no problem walking barefoot practically anywhere (airplane bathrooms included), but this was just gooey and slimy and...yuck. Perhaps, authenticity was not the way to go on this one.

I had no similar problem with the rats themselves. The number of them was a bit disconcerting at first since it was hard to focus on just one without a dozen others scurrying around in my peripheral vision. Once I quickly got accustomed to all the movement, I found them fascinating to watch. My favorite moment came when an Indian woman saw me watching one particular rat and tapped me on the arm, pointed at the him and said in a rapturous voice "beautiful!". To her, it was obvious this rat was indeed beautiful. There could be no clearer demonstration of the powers of perception. At home, my friends were grossed out, yet this woman was finding beauty in these little gray hairballs. I liked her immediately and followed her around, feeding the rats from our little bags of rat kibble long after the French group had left. Strange to say, but I really enjoyed this simple activity and felt warmly welcomed by the congregants (the human ones, the rats were pretty indifferent to us all).

I liked them, too. Here is a religious group focusing their energy on protecting a much-maligned creature. They have never, in over one hundred years of existence, had any spread of ratborne illnesses. All they ask for is a small donation if a visitor intends to use a camera (a low price to pay for the constant intrusion of tour groups, not all of whom are as respectful as they should be, I imagine). As far as religious groups go, these folks are a-ok by me.

With the rest of the day to fill, I returned to Bikaner for a tour around the city. We drove by grand havelis that even after decades of neglect still reflected a quiet dignity. My impression was that with enough time, there were plenty of these hidden gems waiting to be discovered. We saw a palace that had been restored and turned into a luxury hotel but had lost its charm along the way, looking much too European for my taste. We visited the Junagarh Fort, right across the road from our hotel. It was well-preserved, but required all visitors to join a guided tour.

The rushed pace of the visit made it difficult to appreciate all there was to see. The one room we were permitted to linger in was the final one. It displayed gifts that the King had received from heads of state, primarily from the British. One of the gifts was a big, bulky war plane, making me think that the king of Bikaner was not familiar with the concept of 'thanks, but no thanks'.

Bikaner was quiet but interesting. It was a place I would have been happy to spend more time in, but more than that, it was the place next to the place with the rat temple. For someone like me, that's all you need.

The entrance to the Karni Mata Temple.




Special nettings is employed so that the holy rats do not become holy bird food.



Do not adjust your monitor.  That is an orange rat on the right side of the dish.  When I asked why someone had dyed the poor little guy orange, I was told it was because it is considered a holy color.





Despite the large number of tourists,  Karni Mata is still very much a working temple.







Downtown Bikaner has many gorgeous havelis in need of some TLC.




Junagarh Fort's Hall of Private Audiences


The King's bedroom. The bed was low to the ground so that he could have one foot on the ground as he slept, ready for battle at all times. If he was ready for something else, his room connected to that of his wife on the other side of the three doorways.




Wouldn't a small scale model of the plane been a bit easier to display?