Bikaner

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We left Pushkar on Wednesday at 08:30 to make our way to Bikaner, a small desert town in the North West of Rajasthan. We had pre-booked train tickets from a nearby town, Merta, only to later find out that the only way to Merta is to get on the Bikaner bus and get off at the first stop!

Sounds a bit back to front, but in actual fact we were quite relieved we hadn’t opted for the 7hr bus journey as it turned out the bus was a local bus for local people! As it was a local bus, luggage space was minimal, so we had to block all major exit routes with our large rucsacks and place our smaller bags in the over head areas. 5 minutes into the journey and one of the smaller rucsacks (the one with the laptop, books, kitcken sink, etc.) fell down onto some poor lads head. Of course, I did the right thing and blamed Julie. Despite the continuous head rubbing for the rest of the journey, we were assured the guys was ok.

After one and a half hours of stares, and questions such as “What is your country?”, “Where are you coming from?” and “Where are you going?”, we got off the bus in Merta and made our journey over to the train station. For future reference, Merta is not referred to in any guide book and has nothing of any interest to tourists in it. In fact, it appeared that we our fleeting visit was one of the biggest attraction on Wednesday, and I think we used up Merta’s entire 2008 quota for tourists during our short visit (apologies to Merta and its people if any of the above is incorrect).

We arrived in Bikaner at around 5pm after quite a comfortable train journey. Our route may have been two hours later than the bus we started the day on, but I think the space and comfort (not to mention luggage space) made it a better option.

Yesterday morning we were up early to make our way over to another small town nearby called Deshnok. Deshnok is famous (in these parts anyway) for the Karni Mata Temple; a Temple that is home to hundreds of sacred rats. For whatever reason, these rats do not leave the Temple and, from our visit, we can confirm they are very much at home inside the grounds of the Temple and appear to have very little intention of leaving anyway. While I was happy enough to enter the Temple grounds, due to my protestant upbringing, I could not bring myself to enter the Hindu Temple building itself so any photos from within the building are courtesy of Julie. “Big girl” I hear you say? Attached is a picture of one of the entrances into the building - would you go in?

Today we went on Camel Safari in the desert. Now, while this was great fun, please bear in mind that they farm on the desert land here! So our 3 hour camel safari was more like a grown ups version of a donkey ride at Lossiemouth beach, but without the sea. Not exactly the Laurence of Arabia stuff we had been dreaming off. Still, the weather was great, there was a lot of sand (albeit ploughed sand), and there were camel’s (which we sat on while being led around by two locals), so in our minds it will always be our desert camel safari.

Tomorrow morning we are on the move again. This time we head back South to Jodhpur.

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Comments

[Ruth]

Arghhhh!
I actually don't know what to say - my pizza is resurfacing just at the pictures of the RATS! Holy how?! Rat traps required. The camel pose is a winner though! xox