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29th October - Pushkar
Totally slept in today despite not going to bed that late - Pushkar is not a 'staying out late' kind of town, every night dad and I wander back through near empty streets to the hotel and have to sneak past the hotel boys who are sleeping. Although we're on the opposite side of the lake from where all the action is, it's noticeably louder this morning and more and more people are arriving for the camel fair. For such a sleepy town, having 100,000 people descend on it for a couple of weeks every year must really cause a change in atmosphere! I've started reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - it's the first book for the book club that Rosie, Holly, Emily and I are having whilst I'm in India. It's like nothing I've ever read before but I'm at page forty and I think I'm just about getting the hang of it.
Looking back over the last couple of days, I realise I haven't even mentioned the rooms we're staying in. The Hotel Lotus has several rooms, all at different prices. The back rooms are the cheapest (between £1-£2 per night) and there are four rooms on the front that have lake views [£3-£4 per night). Dad and I both have rooms on the front and they are amazing - as well as the fantastic view they're beautifully decorated both inside and out. Mine's the fanciest one (dad emailed ahead specifically requesting this room for me as he knew how much I'd love it) - pink, blue and green walls, COVERED in gems and mirror tiles in random patterns all over the walls. It even has a mirror mosaic floor! It's absolutely beautiful and totally unique - a princess room if ever there was one. Dad told me a few years ago that his favourite thing about his lake view room in Pushkar was that in the morning you can get up, open your doors wide and get back into bed, enjoying a morning coffee with a stunning view and total peace and quiet. I now know exactly what he meant and am doing the same thing every morning.
After another lazy morning we headed off out to the bazaar, stopping for a 'proper' Italian espresso with dad's Pushkar coffee man (I swear he's got someone for everything here!) and then carried on through the stall and temple lined streets until we reached the open grounds where the camel fair will be held in a few days time. At the moment, the stadium is being used as a car park and there are only a few stalls set up, fairground rides are scattered in pieces yet to be assembled and the odd camel can be found wandering about. Dad assures me that by Wednesday (the day we leave unfortunately) the entire area will be heaving with people and it'll be unrecognisable from the state it is now. We're coming by again on Tuesday for a camel ride and hopefully on Wednesday morning for the opening celebrations of the fair before we catch our train back to Delhi in the afternoon. We carried on through the backstreets round the lake (I saw six adorable three of four week old puppies in the street - it took every ounce of my being not to take them all home with me) and eventually came out by Sunset Bar which we decided was far too aptly named not to stop and watch the sunset across the lake and have a little something to eat. Dinner, stroll home, a little more Midnight's Children (it really is bloody amazing and I'm only at page 108) and then bed. I'm up at 6am tomorrow for a day trip to Deshnok to see the Rat Temple. Dad's (not so secretly) terrified, I can't wait!!
30th October - Deshnok
I was still half asleep when we set off for Deshnok at 7am this morning. Getting up so early in Pushkar just seems wrong somehow - at 6am it's totally silent and peaceful and still, who I am to wreck it by getting up and brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush, thus ruining the ambience?! But get up we did and despite managing to stay awake for a short while, the inevitable happened and I was fast asleep in the back of the car before we'd even left Pushkar. I woke up just before 10am when we stopped for chai (a sweet tea that I'm persevering with but still not a fan of) and dad told me that the best thing that I missed whilst sleeping was a family of peacocks crossing the road - a mum and her babies - I've never even imagined a baby peacock let alone seen one! The journey from Pushkar to Deshnok is around 224km and we had another 81km until we arrived - another hour and a half of sleep then!
I feel I should explain at this point the reason we were travelling such a long way by car in the middle of our stay in Pushkar. The day after I fell ill in Jaipur, our original plan had been to catch the midnight train to Deshnok (not Georgia lol) to see the Rat Temple and then continue by bus to Pushkar. My pathetic unadjusted body rendered these plans in tatters and we decided to head to Pushkar a day early - putting plans for Deshnok on the backburner for the time being. Having looked into it when we arrived in Pushkar, we discovered that hiring a driver to take us was not completely out of the question and here we were, on our way to see the temple of the rats. The Karni Mata temple (its proper name) is one of the more bizarre attractions in India that had caught my eye when reading the rough guide over the last few months and I decided instantly that I definitely wanted to visit it. Also, it is one of the few things in Rajasthan that dad HASN'T visited so the opportunity to take him somewhere new was too good to miss. The temple is teaming with free-roaming rats (known as kabas) which devotees believe are reincarnated souls saved from the wrath of Yama, the god of death. The story (if you'd care to hear it) goes like this:
Members of the Charan caste of musicians believe that incarnations of the goddess Durga periodically appear among them, one of whom was Karni Mata, born at a village near Phalodi in 1387. She went on to perform miracles such as water divination and bringing the dead back to life, eventually becoming the region's most powerful cult leader. According to legend, one of Karni Mata's followers came to her because her son was grievously ill, but by the time they got to him, he had died. Karni Mata went to Yama, the god of the underworld, to ask for him back, but Yama refused. Knowing that of all the creatures upon the earth, only rats were outside Yama's domain, Karni Mata decreed that all Charans would henceforth be reincarnated as rats, thus escaping Yama's power. It is these sacred rats that inhabit the Deshnok temple. - Thank you Rough Guide to India!
The temple is free to enter (save for a twenty rupee charge to take photographs - well worth it!) with the only condition of entry being that you do so without wearing shoes. Socks are accepted but dad and I decided to brave it and enter as the Indian tourists did, barefoot and bold. We did see a few other Europeans (only a few though, the vast majority of visitors were Indian tourists) wearing foot covers and I say without hesitation that they looked completely ridiculous. Whilst queuing to enter through magnificent metal doors, we saw the odd rat here and there, nibbling on a bit of food or scurrying away but only a few, not the crowds of rats that I'd read about. The queue we were in eventually led us to the shrine at the centre of this Hindu temple which houses the image of Karni Mata. It is at this shrine that food was being offered by the Hindus for the rats and although we could steal a glance, entry to non-Hindus is strictly forbidden. We hadn't thought to bring any food with us anyway so it saved us the embarrassment of getting to the front and having nothing to offer! Our driver made his offering and then walked us around the temple - it was at this point that I realised the rats were actually right in front of me, I just hadn't noticed them. A wire framework gate seemed innocuous enough until I realised there were rats sleeping in the curves of the metal. Holes in the wall appeared to move as rats scurried in and out of tiny passages in the walls, making the light shift. The darkness allowed you to pretend that you weren't surrounded but by the time we exited the passage, we knew better. The scene that greeted us on the other side cannot really be captured by photographs or videos (despite my attempts to do both) - huge bowls of milk were laid out and every space surrounding them was occupied by a rat having its lunch. After the initial shock of seeing so many rats in one place and so clearly in the flesh (I've seen the odd rat in India but never as many as this) it dawned on me that our presence there barely affected them. I managed to sit right next to a bowl of milk, taking photographs of them whilst they dined and they didn't move an inch. I have to say that my scepticism about reincarnation disappeared somewhat at this point as any previous instances of coming across a rat had usually resulted in it scarpering within seconds of you laying eyes on it - this was not the case here. These rats seemed oddly content and unaffected by the crowds viewing them, treating the humans in their temple with the same indifference as you would other passengers in a tube carriage. Very strange indeed! I'd read that it is considered very fortunate for a rat to run over your feet whilst inside the temple- not something I was hoping would happen admittedly but whilst I was filming one little rat scampered over to me, hesitated a moment and then dashed over and touched one of my toes before scurrying off again! A moment I happily managed to capture on film. Mum's response to this was that I should be picking out the lottery numbers this week! We did attempt to spot the elusive white rat (unsuccessfully I'm afraid) and watched in horror as a little boy of about three (fearless at that age and having no real concept of consequences) grabbed a rat by its tail and attempted to dangle it mid air, much to the distress of his parents and not really the done thing if the rats are in fact reincarnated members of the Charan caste! All in all, the rat temple was DEFINITELY worth the eight hour round trip and I doubt I'll ever experience anything like it again. One positive to come out of it, dad's fear of rats has now gone completely, see the photographs if you don't believe me!
- comments
C Kim Rat temple is NOT for me.