Bikaner

We left Mandawa early as it was still another 5 hours to Bikaner, around 10 miles outside of Bikaner we stopped at a camel farm where Rob and I tried out some Camel milk tea and later we stopped at a very ornate crematorium.


We reached Bikaner around 5 o’clock and checked in to a hotel about 15 minutes walk from Bikaner Fort. We went for a walk around town and found that the dust was more than overcoming so we went back to the hotel for dinner.

In the morning Sunny took us to the Red Fort – the impressive Fort of Bikaner – where we stayed looking around for a couple of hours looking around enjoying the views over Bikaner.


After the Red Fort we took us on to the Karni Mata Temple – also known as the rat temple. The rat temple is pretty self explanatory – there are rats EVERYWHERE, there are thousands of them! The thousands of black rats within the temple are revered, as well as the black rats there are one or two white rats which are believe to be manifestations of Karni Mata – a hindu sage the temple is named after – and her family. It took a while to get used to walking around the temple The rats are all very used to humans and often come to try and have a nibble of your feet. It also believed that if a rat runs over your foot it’s good luck – so it appears I’m pretty lucky!