A temple for a different kind of animal

Our next and final stop on our eleven-day trip was Bikaner, in the northwest of Rajasthan. The must-see in this hot, arid desert town is the Karni Mata temple, located in the village of Deshnok, 30km to the south. The temple is overrun with rats, which are believed to be the reincarnations of dead storytellers. While I’m a fan of rodents in cages, I’m a little more squeamish about the kind that runs along the kitchen floor, chews holes in packages of ramen, and leaves poop on the cupboard shelves. To help me deal with an entire temple full of these little guys, I made sure to wear especially sturdy socks (being that it’s a temple, you have to take your shoes off before entering) and reminded myself that rats could actually be quite cute – I hoped that would help me not freak out if and when one of them ran over my foot.

The rats really and truly were everywhere. They sat in the curlicues of iron railings, huddled in corners, hurried over stairways, and climbed up pillars. There was plenty of prasad left out for them, and the rats were gorging on seeds, nuts, even coconut.

In two different areas of the temple, there were dishes of milk set out for the rats. The little guys would perch on the edge to have a drink, trying to avoid getting their feet wet.

Danny had bought some prasad outside the temple and tried to hand-feed the little pieces of numkeen to the rats, who usually didn’t want them. They were probably full from all the food they’d been eating all day!

I had to walk carefully, so as not to step on one of them as they scurried from place to place. The floor was sticky from a combination of rat and pigeon waste. In the end, I’m glad I had brought an extra pair of socks, as the ones I was wearing were a mess of prasad and poop.

It’s auspicious if a rat runs over your foot, which is hard to avoid. But instead of running over my feet, the rats were more interested in sniffing my socks. While I was snapping photos, a rat or two would come up to me, inspect my socks, and move on. Sometimes they would sniff one sock and then the other. If I stood still long enough, a rat would be encouraged to start climbing. The first time this happened, the rat put his feet on my pant leg and stood up on his hind legs before moving on. But later, two different rats at two different times got up onto my trousers and started to climb! I guess it must be especially auspicious if the rats take that much interest in you.

It’s also said that it’s good luck to see a white rat. We happened to see one crawling around near a trash bin. Overall, I think we came away from the temple with plenty of blessings from Karni Mata’s rat friends.