The Rat Temple
Trip Start
Jul 25, 2006
1
100
165
Trip End
Ongoing
Bikaner,
India
Saturday, January 19, 2008
After a 45 minute ride wedged into a local bus, we arrived at the town. This was, unquestioningly, MY trip to visit the temple. Danayi, who suffers from a significant fear of rats, had shown a disappointing lack of enthusiasm when I proposed the idea of visiting the temple. To her credit, she accompanied me, and even managed to step inside for a few minutes before fleeing back outside to the relative comfort of leering Indian male stares.
When you walk into the temple, you are required to take off your shoes. As you shuffle into the temple (and you must shuffle, lifting your feet too high is prohibited as you might inadvertently trod on a sacred rodent), you see hundreds of rats everywhere
The Rat Temple 01
. A second longer and you realize you are looking at possibly thousands of rats, not hundreds. They scurry across the floor, run in and out of holes in the walls, and hang around drinking out of huge saucers of milk. It is considered good luck if one of the rats runs over your feet.Thousands of pilgrims come here, buying sugary Indian sweets from the shops outside as Prasad, an offering to the rats of the temple. Hunched old women in colourful saris leave their sweets on the shrine for the rats to eat, while bringing her hands together in a prayer in front of the scampering rodents. The faithful crowd around the dozens of holes in the walls, hand feeding the scurrying animals. Local children try to make a bit of extra rupees by finding and coaxing out the mystic white rat that is supposed to bring enormous good luck if spotted. I caught a glimpse of the pinkish, albino rat's head. I'm still waiting on my rat luck.
Of all of the temples and odd sites I've seen, this is certainly one of the stranger ones.
Comments
Karni Mata
Even after all this time, I'm still no okay with this place. I'm sorry, I just can't do rats. I do encourage all who read this to go to the website. It's a treat.