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Published: January 13th 2012
What a day this turned out to be. Before I write about today, in order for this entry to make a bit more of an impact on you, I will tell you something about me that few people know. I have a 'thing' about going barefoot in places where a lot of people may have gone barefoot before me. I rarely shower barefoot in hotels and hostels, no matter how clean they appear, and I often won't even go barefoot in the room. I can handle walking barefoot on the beach, or even in the forest or people's yards. Regular dirt doesn't bother me. But in certain situations and places, I just have a 'thing' about going barefoot. Now you know.
On to Bikaner. After washing my hair by pouring water over my head from a bucket (no hot water, so I couldn't stand to take a shower) and our lovely breakfast of parantha and boiled eggs, we were on the road. I'd still recommend Hotel Shekawati, by the way, even though we had no hot water. On our journey to Bikaner, we saw three dead camels on the road, all in different places. One had the remnants of a
cart rammed through its gut and had clearly been hit by a large vehicle. There were several people sitting on a blanket only a few meters away, eating, just hanging out waiting to get a ride. Good grief. Annette deemed this road heretofore named Three Dead Camel Road. Hilarious.
About halfway to Bikaner we stopped at a Midway for coffee (driver's eat free at Midway restaurants) and arrived in Bikaner around 2PM. I knew were were going to visit a Hindu temple about 30km south of Bikaner, so I asked Hardev if we could just do that first, and then go sightseeing in Bikaner. So we drove straight to the temple. Karni Mata Temple. Translation - Temple of 1000 Rats. I didn't read about this temple in Lonely Planet before we arrived. You can see where this is going. I didn't take the name literally. This was the first and last time I didn't read about my destination in India before arriving.
All temples require you to remove your shoes before entering, as a sign of respect. No problem. The temples are spotlessly clean and even if there is a bit of dust, I'm not bothered by that.
So even though we had to walk across an empty, paved lot that wasn't particularly clean, I didn't see anything that I couldn't handle barefoot. I was wearing sandals with no socks. So we took our shoes off, Annette was wearing socks, and walked across the lot, paid the 100Rs for the 'camera fee' and went inside the temple.
Good God Almighty! A rat ran right in front of me! And then another one! And then I saw a live one eating a dead one! And then I saw a room off to the side with iron bars surrounding it and it was full of, oh shit, RATS!!!! What the
!@#$%!<(MISSING)/a>^&* was this???? I was in hell. I was living my worst nightmare! Barefoot! I told Annette I couldn't do it, took two photos, and walked back out. On the way out, the guy who we paid the camera fee to, who had given us a hard time going in by saying we were rich Americans and should pay 20 dollars, not 20 rupees, asked me why I was leaving so soon. I answered him honestly. I said, 'Because that is the filthiest, nastiest thing I have ever seen and it should be burned to the ground.' It just came out and I couldn't stop it.
The story of the temple, as it is written in Lonely Planet, is that Karni Mata, a 14th century incarnation of Durga, asked Yama, god of death, to restore life to her dead son, Lakhan. Yama refused, so Karni Mata decreed that all members of her family would be reincarnated as kabas, or rats. Now why you'd wish that on your own family instead of the the family of the person who pissed you off is beyond my understanding, but Hindus worship rats. Still. It is believed that if a rat runs over your foot in the temple, you'll have good luck. Believe me, if a rat had run across MY foot, it would have been his seriously bad luck!
I was out. I survived. I put my Tevas on and waited patiently for Annette. She went into the inner sanctum and took photos. She said the smell was horrifying. Her word. And she couldn't go all the way in because she's not Hindu. Anyway, when we got in the car, she asked me I wanted a wet wipe. Did I??? 
Midway Restaurant
on the way from Mandawa to Bikaner
Moving on. Not thinking about rats. We drove to Bikaner and the Junagarh (300Rs). Garh means fort. It is a giant pink palace/fort/museum and it is pretty incredible. It was built between 1589 and 1593, so it is not really that old. It is a bargain at only 6 dollars to enter and we stayed for about an hour. Afterwards Hardev took us to Lallgarh Palace to walk around. It is a former palace turned hotel/museum, but the museum was closed. It is a gorgeous hotel though, and we were allowed to roam around and take pictures. We considered asking how much to stay there, but resisted. Hardev drove us to our meager lodgings - Hotel Marudhar Heritage - not to be confused with the sleazy-looking Hotel Marudhar where we went first. Yikes. Our hotel is an old haveli and has a room for drivers, which is important. When hotels don't have driver's rooms, drivers often end up having to pay a bit of money to a guesthouse or sleep in their car. I didn't know this when I made my own hotel bookings, so some of the Clearly Marked
bathroom at the midway hotels where we stayed didn't have driver's rooms. But this one did and Hardev said it was clean. Our room was fine, but once again, we were faced with a sub-par bathroom, but at only 800Rss for two people, you get what you pay for.
We were hungry, so we asked Hardev to recommend a restaurant. He drove us across town to Hotel Harasar Haveli where we had an unbelieveably good dal mahkeni and polak paneer and jeera rice. And beer. I was so full when we left, I knew I needed to walk around but it was dark and Bikaner, sorry, was filthy, so we just went back to our room and went to bed. We did read, however, that the hotel where we had dinner is in the Lonely Planet and has rooms the same price as our hotel or just a bit more. We wished we had stayed there as it looked much nicer than where we stayed. There were a lot of tourists in the rooftop restaurant as well. And this hotel has beer. Mmm...
Back at the hotel we just went to bed. We were tired after this busy day and tomorrow's drive Clearly Marked
We saw lots of bathrooms in India marked with 'She' and 'He' is a long one to Khuri Village.
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