A Day in Bikaner

 Sensory overload!!!

Today was one of those days I love in India... a day where every one of your senses is stimulated with a very high voltage current..... Usually all at once!

We started our day at the Junagadh Fort here in Bikaner.

 The best thing about this fort  is the elaborate and very rich interior.....walls and ceilings painted with gold and fabrics woven with both gold and silver. It dates back to the late 1400's but has been added to over the centuries. It has also stood up to many many attacks.

I might have spent 3 months in India over the last year and a half but I still have a lot to learn. I was admiring the beautiful dolls clothes in the Fort but Tarun informed me that they weren't dolls clothes but clothes to dress the Gods in. Whoops!

Bikaner is most well known as the place of the Rat Temple....actually about 30 kms away so it gave us the chance to experience another back road through a pretty cool little village. I still think it's hilarious the way people look at me when we venture out of the usual tourist areas. Tarun stopped and asked some guys for directions and they almost climbed through the window trying to get a better look at me.

But then things changed and I started looking at them. Love the uniforms the school girls wear here... often the same style but in different colours... I particularly like blue and white and marvel at how they keep the white looking so clean in such a dusty atmosphere.

The Rat Temple was weird. The actual temple is very old with a very beautiful entrance.

It was a Temple so we had to take off our shoes. My first reaction was 'ow' as the ground was very hot on the feet. The second reaction was 'yuk!' as we had to walk around the rat infested temple in bare feet. As we entered it sure stimulated my sense of smell! I'm sure you can imagine!

There were rats everywhere ... up, down and around and in every little crevice you could see... And the ones you couldn't see.

I have a friend, and I know she'll read this and know exactly who I'm talking about, who was recently so traumatised by a mouse in the house that she had to call for help ... she even put it on Facebook!!

Wish you had been with me 'D' .... I would have loved to see your reaction as rats ran over your toes... and that they did as they were completely unafraid of people.

As we left Tarun once again enjoyed telling some gullible person that I had adopted him as a very young child. When questioned about his proficiency in Hindi he informed them that I'd sent him to a Hindi school. You can't stop this man :-)

Rat watching is thirsty work, so aware that I wasn't going to have too many more chances, I once again sampled the wonderful sugarcane juice. It's amazing how much juice they can extract from such a small length of cane.

Back to the city and we got a tuktuk driver to take us round the Old City... even Tarun accepted that the streets were too narrow for the car this time. The tuktuk driver waited for us while we had a very nice lunch ...

... all for way less than NZ $10.

Our first stop was to look at some beautiful old houses

..then through the streets that were so narrow that we could reach out and touch everything we passed.

 

A real surprise was a beautiful Jain Temple over 500 years old. Evidently when it was built ghee was used as a substitute for water and in very hot weather it can be seen seeping out of the floor.... not so hot today!

The interior was amazing and completely unexpected.

Just around the corner there was another Temple and at least 1000 pigeons but I liked the cow eating plastic... not sure what sort of milk she produces, if any!

 

The next stop was to meet one of the locals, a man with a moustache two metres long. He keeps it wound up and secured with hair clips but unwound it for our benefit... And a few rupees!

Back to the car and back to the hotel, driving past the Border Security place on the way.

There is a big military presence in many of these places close to the border of Pakistan, and given the number of military training places I've seen on this and previous trips, I'd assume that India has a huge army.

The pool was very welcome when we arrived back at the hotel.

Dinner here at the hotel tonight. It's served outside around the pool but I'm not so sure about tonight as it's just started to rain. I can't believe that every time we've had rain, not that it's happened often, or for long, it's been in the desert!!!