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Published: October 2nd 2011
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[Update: I arrived back in India on Sept 7th with Carolina after spending 4 months with her in Spain. We collected Gladys (the Royal Enfield Motorbike which I had left with my Mumbai friends Raj and Marge ) and took off north...... to Udaipur, Mt Abu, Pushkar, Bikaner in Rajasthan; then Amritsar in Punjab; and Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh).
In March 2010 I visited the Rat Temple with friend Libby in Deshnoke, about 30 klms before Bikaner in Rajasthan. On this current trip we rode through Deshnoke but did not stop. However, I wanted to just focus in this blog on this pretty weird and amazing temple, using pictures from 2010.
Karni Mata (1387 – 1538 if you want to accept that she lived for 151 years!) was a female Hindu sage and is worshiped as the incarnation of the goddess Durga. The most famous of her temples is in Deshnoke which was created following her mysterious disappearance from her home. According to local legend, Karni Mata implored Yama, the god of death, to restore the life of the son of one of her storytellers. Yama refused, and Karni Mata incarnated the dead son and then all subsequent deceased
storytellers (the local caste) as rats, under her protection.
The temple, completed in its current form in the early 20th Century, gives protection to its rats (actually they are just small mice) which are treated as sacred and believed to be reincarnations of the ancestors of the village. This creates a precarious situation for the visitor to the temple because if you accidentally (or for that matter purposefully) were to tread on one of the rats and kill it, you are actually killing an ancestor of one of the locals. This is a fact not lost on the locals, who might be thought to then be acting somewhat opportunistically, because the deal is that you then must replace the deceased rat with one made of solid gold.
Sighting a white rat amidst hordes of black rats is considered specially auspicious. There is a viewing cage where you might get that lucky, although there are meant to be several white rats amongst the temple population.
Throughout the year, pilgrims from around India visit to pay religious tribute to Karni Mata. During Navratri festival thousands of people travel to the temple by foot. It was Navratri during our ride
through the area and we saw these pilgrims with their red flags flying along the road side. This sort of thing happens all over India (for example the walking pilgrimage to Puri’s Shiva temple in Orissa each year) and one is struck by the many foot-sore ill-prepared limping pilgrims from all walks (sic) of life who meander down the many approaches to the destined place of worship.
Deshnoke is just another dusty and relatively dirty stop along the way in Rajasthan, but a temple where rats run free and are fed milk and biscuits has to be worth a visit if you are that way inclined. Just be careful to watch your step! Gold is currently trading at over US $1,600 per ounce. (Look if I got this wrong its because its very hard to decipher the web info on the price of gold. No correspondence shall be entered into on this point!). At least if you are going to squash a rat, pick a skinny one!
Background info from wikepedia.com
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Marguerite
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No ratsack?
Great to hear that you continue to have an amazing adventure even if you have gone a bit ratty. Hugs and hugs