Bikaner

Dear all,

Our first stop was to be Bikaner and the sacred rat temple. This was an unusual event - I'd seen plenty of temples but precious few rats. Before that, however, we needed to rise at 5am In Delhi, drive all day and stay one night in a Bikaner hotel. We would visit the rats the following morning.

When we rose early on the morning on the 24th September we climbed into my, Freddie's, Danni's and Trish's new truck, long familiar to the others. However it was dark so I couldn't see it which rendered my first introduction to my new home a bit lacking in feeling.

We drove out of Delhi on quiet streets, watching men brush their teeth and poop at the verges, seeing the less fancy streets of India for the first time. I wasn't shocked, it wasn't so different from China - lots of shacks, washing hanging any place, people living under one other's feet, a definite lack of sensible garbage disposal measures.

At our first pee stop I made a point of photographing the truck. Looks much the same as the previous, except it was built in 2004, not 1992. The engine was quieter and more powerful, the gears didn't clunk horrendously, and they'd never had a breakdown.

The truck, driven by Dave and Frenchie, had recently been from Istanbul to Beijing to Kathmandu to Delhi. Postcards of the Apsaras I'd seen in Dunhuang were stuck to the ceiling. This gave a nice sense of continuity and smugness to my ride - after all, I had been on the road for a full two months now, I was no longer a novice. I made a point of telling my fellow passengers where the postcards were from and that I was there just a couple of months ago. Of course my fellow passengers had just come from Africa, Cambodia and South America so I had no right to be so smug. Nonetheless I was proud to find and identify celestial beings here in India also.

At our first of many, many chai stops I was the first to leap out the truck, smile at everyone staring at me, pick a plastic chair, recline and await my chai. At this chai stop however no chai was forthcoming for no explicable reason. We waited for ten minutes, watching a nearby truck / bus load up with passengers, then left to find another chai stop.

The sun was setting in the scrub before we arrived at Bikaner.

Fortunately the hotel was wonderful. There were four independent male travellers in total - Freddie, Lutz, myself, Paul. However Freddie had decided that he wanted to pay extra for his own room each night, leaving three men and two rooms. This meant that on one in three nights I would get my own room. Tonight was my night.

The room had a marble floor, something I initially considered a sign of expensive construction but later considered a sign that they have a lot of marble to hand. The furniture was exclusively hand carved hardwood, again not a sign of a high end room but a sign that there's a lot of wood and poorly paid carpenters about. This cheapening of items consisted in the UK to be luxuries appealed to me.

I soon headed up to the rooftop restaurant for dinner. I am sure it had a lovely view of the surrounding city and fort but it was dark so I couldn't see anything. I was the first one to arrive. I picked a seat in the middle of a large table to wait and listen. Three musicians were sitting cross-legged in a corner, playing and singing. The music was entrancing, especially alone in candlelight, but unfortunately they kept on stopping for one to text and take phone calls. Then they left.

Others soon joined me. I was pleased when Danni and Trish sat close to me. They would be sharing a room for the entire trip and already seemed to be getting along well. They were both outgoing, quick to laugh and to poke fun, not ones to take anything very seriously. I felt a little envious of the convenience and good fortune of their friendship. I had a notion that myself and Paul would not be able to laugh together like that.

The following morning we visited the temple. The day was hot but I didn't care because that was an aspect of India and there were camels outside.

The place was smaller and tattier than I had imagined but there was no real need for it to be big. Better to have a thousand rats than ten thousand. We took our sandals off - compulsory for entering any temple, including rat laden ones - and carefully tip toed in. We did not have to look hard to see the rats. They lined the walls and crevices like furry mould, not afraid of humans but still preferring to have a wall against their backs. Fortunately they did not seem keen to run across our feet, despite it supposedly being good luck.

I reached for my camera and started snapping. It was easy to take pictures but it had the disadvantage of restricting my field of vision, making me less aware of what was going on around me rat-wise. Sometimes I would jump suddenly realising there was one moving inches from my foot or head. 

Danni and Trish behaved entirely contrary to stereotypes of young women, being entirely unafraid of the rats. I was jumping and stepping gingerly everywhere I went but they had no such qualms. I tried to see the rats less as repulsive vermin and more as harmless ornaments and to step as boldly as they. With this in mind I decided to leave the pathway and pose as close to the rats as possible.

There was a passage leading behind the shrine area (which we largely shied away from, not wanting to disturb those here to worship rather than gawp at rats).

The passage was lit only by electric lights. I ventured down this passage, followed by some girls from another group of tourists, wanting to explore the final passage for sake of completionism, not from expectation of finding great wonders down there.

It was difficult because the passage was narrow and the rats were hence nearer. Then the lights went out and we unexpectedly found ourselves in near complete darkness with the nearby rats. The girls behind me screamed and I took a sharp intake of breath. We moved rather swiftly, though not running, towards the light.

Outside I was glad to return to the hot sun, open spaces and my sandals. I took a picture of a camel shackled to a cart and watched the persistent beggars beckoning far up to passengers at the windows of our truck. Then we were off again.

We did not get very far. In town we were crawling along with traffic when we discovered that our GPS ordained route took us through a very narrow two way stone tunnel. It took a while to persuade the tuk tuks and scooters to stop nipping ahead of us so that we could pass through, at which point we near scraped the sides but just managed. After that we reached a level crossing where we were surrounded at all points by pedestrians and scooters. We'd gone the wrong way so we needed to reverse through them. Luckily some police were on hand to help.

We reversed down the busy road, back through the very narrow tunnel, then did a U turn (we have very good drivers). Here Dave left the truck to ask directions. The man he asked offered to lead us out of this mess on his scooter. Dave jumped on the back of the scooter and appeared in front of the truck, a nippy guide to deliver us from chaos. It reminded me of the many computer games where you are trying to escape, following an AI friend ahead, clearing obstacles, shouting advice, leading the way. Dave is the man in the green shirt.

As we progressed the roads became wider and quieter. We were finally able to rely on our GPS and parted from our timely guide. He refused to accept any money for his assistance.

Stephen