Part Seven - Bikaner

Bikaner is a city out west near the border with Pakistan, it is surrounded by the Thar, or Great Indian, Desert.

This wasn’t on our list of places we wanted to visit but Ravi of Tailor India Tours suggested it and so we’ve included it.

The drive from Pushkar takes us in a north-westerly direction, much of the land is arid and it’s clear we’re in desert terrain.

It’s an uneventful journey in terms of sights to see although there are some unfeasibly overloaded vehicles and camel drawn carts, some carrying cattle feed and some carrying people - Health & Safety would have a fit! 

We stay at Cavalry Villa which is the home of Mahendra, a retired army officer, and his wife Bhawna.

It is Bhawna’s family home and the couple have recently totally restored and refurbished it to a very high standard; they’ve done a really good job. The quality of the workmanship and decoration is outstanding.

The Villa is a gracious, traditional building that provides an oasis in the middle of the city.

The lovely courtyard complete with fountain is the perfect place to while away an hour or two after sightseeing.

We discover at dinner on our first night that dining is a communal affair with all guests sitting together round the grand dining table. Our reserved English souls recoil at this enforced intimacy with strangers but we actually have a lovely time.

We meet a French couple, a group of four from the Netherlands and a lovely couple from Singapore who are originally from Darjeeling and Kolkata respectively - as we are going to be visiting both those places, we get some handy tips.

This morning we are going to visit Junagarh Fort. Its city centre position means the views on approach aren’t as dramatic as say Amber Palace, hemmed in as it is by roads and buildings but once inside it is truly magnificent.

In its heyday, the fort had many ingenious defences to protect it from attack, including a crocodile infested moat and gates with elephant- height spikes impregnated with cobra venom!

There are fewer visitors here than at other major attractions we’ve visited and the whole experience is more relaxed and intimate. 

In one of the fort’s rooms we are astonished to come across a WW1 de Havilland bi-plane, not what you expect to see in a palace in Rajasthan! The plane is actually made up of two planes which were both shot down in battle and later combined to make this one by the then Maharajah.

The weaponry on display here is bloodthirsty stuff, mainly designed for hand to hand combat; there is an array of blades that could, and probably have, done serious damage.

There’s another room with various beds of nails, sword blades and spear heads used by sadhus to demonstrate their immunity to pain.

The decoration in many of the rooms is really lovely, much of it hand painted and we find ourselves transported back to days gone by.

We leave the fort behind and head off to the old town in a tuk tuk.

Bikaner is renowned for its nine, intricately decorated havelis all sporting beautifully carved red sandstone and wooden doors to die for. 

Bikaner was part of the once flourishing Silk Route, so the merchants of Bikaner were prosperous, choosing to build these exquisite and grand mansions as their choice of residences.

Built around the 14th-15th century, The Rampuria Haveli was built to befit the wealthy lifestyle of the merchant family - Rampuria.

Sadly, all those we see stand empty and closed up. We are told that the families that own them live elsewhere and whilst they still engage caretakers to oversee their upkeep, it’s a real shame that there is no life in these grand old buildings any more.

This evening we venture out to find Deepak Textiles, a shop recommended to us by our hosts as a place to buy block printed clothes.

Google Maps takes us deep into the labyrinth that is the local market and abandons us there to sink or swim by ourselves! 

We wander around and enter the fruit and veg part of the market at which point it becomes apparent that we’ve gone wrong.

By some miracle we do find the shop and kit ourselves out with some lovely, thin, cotton shirts for only a few pounds each!

This morning starts surprisingly cold and misty, we have taken the warm sunny days for granted. It soon warms up however to a very pleasant 27 degrees.

Today we are visiting the Karin Mata Temple in Deshnok, a little way outside Bikaner. We know it’s also called The Rat Temple but nothing quite prepares us for what awaits us.

We arrive and as usual take our shoes off before entering.

We join the line of people and process into the temple where we see…

quite literally hundreds of rats scuttling about!

There are huge dishes of milk put out for them to drink from and grain is scattered all over the place for them to eat as well as the food offerings the faithful bring with them.

The temple was built to honour Karni Mata, an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga. The legend goes that Karni Mata’s stepson Laxman, drowned in a nearby lake; Karni Mata asked the god of death, Yama to bring her stepson back to life and when he refused, Karni Mata reincarnated Laxman and his 4,000 descendants as rats. These rats are revered accordingly.

To us westerners, wandering round barefoot amongst all these free-roaming rats and their droppings is disconcerting to say the least but to devotees this is a truly spiritual experience. Many consider it auspicious to drink from the milk the rats have drunk from and also to eat the same food.

This was an experience for sure and we’re glad we went to Deshnok but   perhaps it’s best left as a one off!

Outside the temple lots of people want their photos taken with us, we’re happy to oblige and in return get to snap a ninety year old pilgrim!

We feel in need of some sustenance after this experience and go in search of coffee. En route we are persuaded to try some sugar cane juice. There are countless street vendors selling this everywhere we’ve been in India.

Basically, they crush lengths of sugar cane in something akin to a motorised clothes mangle; the juice goes down a shoot, through some ice to cool it and voila your drink is ready. 

We haven’t tried this drink before having assumed it’ll be sickly sweet, how wrong were we? It is sweet of course but much more subtly so than we’d expected. It’s refreshing and delicious, we have a second cup each! 

Next we visit the Bhanda Shah Jain Temple back in Bikaner city. This couldn’t be a more different experience from the one we had at Deshnok. 

The temple is serene, there are no rodents running about (a blessed relief!) and the interior is splendid.

This, along with the Golden Temple in Amritsar, is easily the most beautiful we’ve seen so far on this trip. The walls and the ceiling are painted with detailed scenes and lovely patterns; the inner temple area is coated in gold and inlaid with semi-precious stones and there are even some Victorian tiles from Britain on the walls!

The priest washes the statue of Lord Sumatinath every day and then decorates it with sandalwood paste on its neck and feet and scatters it with rose petals.

We see the little room containing the length of sandalwood which is ground into a paste every day on something that looks similar to an old mill stone, the paste gathers in a dip in the middle. 

We are two of just a handful of visitors to this beautiful and peaceful place which certainly adds to the atmosphere.

We spend our final afternoon and evening back at Cavalry Villa relaxing and enjoying a delicious meal outside in the beautiful courtyard,

Mahendra has some hilarious tales to tell of his army days and it’s fascinating to talk to Bhawna about the history of the Villa, she is kind enough to show us some old photographs.

We have no hesitation in recommending Cavalry Villa and hope one day we might return. https://cavalryvilla.com

There’s another long drive ahead of us, from Bikaner to Jaialmer - let’s hope we like it!