We were up at 5am to catch the early morning but to Bikaner. The hotel staff dropped us of and the bus was suspiciously empty when we set off and it left on time – hmm! I wondered what the real departure time was when we simply moved to the other end of the road and stopped again. Hang on – what’s this? Setting off on time and the bus barely 20% full? Surely not. Yes, there we were at only 6.15am hurtling down the road towards Bikaner. Sunrise over the desert was lovely; a huge red orb steadily drifting above the horizon.
The empty bus conundrum was soon solved on reaching the town of Pokaran; a whole crowd piled on making the bus ‘totally packed out’ as one lad informed us about the room status of his hotel. Steve remembers this little town fondly – it’s where he puked up day-glow yellow vomit into the middle of the road from the window of the bus. He almost splattered someone in the process but in true Indian fashion no-one batted an eye-lid. Only the local cows ambled by to see if he’d deposited anything edible! By the time the bus pulled out of the next town we were easily running on double capacity – normal service resumes. They were all having a good bicker about who should sit where. Never a dull moment!
We reached Bikaner almost 7hrs after setting off and someone was waiting for us as promised. The boss in Roop Mahal had phoned his friend to help us sort out onwards tickets to Amritsar for that evening. Shanti House is a small family run place and the owner even said we could make use of one of his rooms for a couple of hours. We didn’t need that as we had an activity in mind but it was good to take a break up on his small roof terrace while we waited for our taxi. In the meantime the lady of the house prepared a very tasty thali for us that was good value at Rs55. Another plus was having a clean bathroom to use – I’ve not ventured into a bus stop one yet and have no ambition to do so!
While we were waiting for the taxi to take us to a temple that had piqued our curiosity a number of years ago I reflected on more of those Indian phrases. The Indians have a precise, to the point way of using English and, however correct it is, they tend to phrase things very differently. Here’s one of my favourites so far from a poster in an ATM booth. I’m sure in England we’d write something like: ‘In the event of your card being retained by the machine please contact the nearest branch of your bank immediately.’ Here’s the Indian version: ‘Should your card be captured by ATM press cancel several times.’ I know which one I prefer. You?
And so to today’s cultural event – a side trip to Karni Mata Temple about 30kms out of town at a cost of Rs1000 in a taxi that would then drop us at the bus stand. So what’s so special about this place that is was reasonably busy for a random Friday afternoon? The place is commonly called the rat temple – yes, it’s just what you’re suspecting it might be – full of rats. There’s some story about a curse being placed upon a member of the goddess of death Yama’s family resulting in the descendants coming back as rats. Karni Mata cast this spell, hence the name of the temple. To that end these rodents are highly revered and actively encouraged to live in the temple. To be honest they eat better than most homeless people on a diet of coconut milk, papaya, rice and a huge bowl of traditional sweets. Now obviously you have to take your shoes off before entering a temple but luckily it was permissible to keep your socks on. The rats per say don’t bother me in the slightest (in fact I enjoyed watching them) but I didn’t fancy traipsing through rat poo.
It was an interesting experience sharing a religious space with hundreds of rats but probably not one we need to repeat. Apparently it’s lucky if one crawls over your foot and many people were actively encouraging this activity; we were happy to let the rat decide. To be honest they might sniff at your foot but would scuttle off as soon as they realised your foot wasn’t edible. The temple is in need of a rat doctor as we saw many that were threadbare, injured, had tumours or were at death’s door. I wonder what these rats are reincarnated as.
It was now time to board our last (hopefully) night bus with the next stop being Amritsar and another place we’ve longed to visit. I’ve a feeling their temple will be a little more hygienic that this one!
