The Littlest Hobos

STATS: Day count=107; Current Illness count=2; theft count=0; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=3 (up!); Chris’ photo count=1123; Emma’s photo count=51

Travelling around India by train, on journeys of anywhere from 5 to 20 hours, we keep being reminded of the theme tune from ‘The Littlest Hobo’ – the colour version, not the black & white one (I’m not that old!). Still, it’s better than having Sir Cliff’s Mistletoe & Wine revolving round your head for days, I guess (thanks to an electronic birthday card from Iain, that was a risk).

After proclaiming in the last post that we were all (including Laura) in fine health, we must have annoyed someone on high as first Laura was hit by some illness or heatstroke that wiped her out for a day or two, then both Emma & I were hit with the usual food poisoning or similar, taking us out for days, and we’re still recovering even now – in a country where the food is so varied and interesting, and most of it able to be eaten by us vegetarians, I’ve only actually been able to eat for 50% of our time here. I’m sure being ill has coloured our opinion of India to a fair degree, which is a shame.

We finished our time in Agra trying (and failing) to find a nice shopping area, and seeing an interesting workshop where they were inlaying coloured stone into marble – a real cottage industry around Agra as it is part of the beauty of the Taj Mahal – the difficulty is spotting the real quality pieces of souvenirs from the tat – after visiting this high quality workshop and shop it was a lot easier telling the sandstone and alabaster from the marble, and the plastic from the real stone inlay. The photo shows the different stages in the process.

We returned to Delhi (catching a train which was 5 hours late in arriving at Agra and 7 hours late getting into Delhi) from where Laura was flying back to the UK, with a list of more interesting things to see around the city (thanks Prashant / Prashant’s aunt). Unfortunately, being ill, we saw none of them, but at least recovered enough to be able to move on to our next destination when we had planned to, after spending two days going stir crazy looking at the inside of our hostel room!

Ever since starting out on this journey, it is a daily ritual of ours to proclaim “today is the hottest day ever”. And generally it has been true – it definitely seems to have been getting hotter each day. Neither of us are particular sun worshippers, or really enjoy the heat, but it has been bearable. So where did we decide to go after being ill and only just about managing the 43 degree heat of Delhi and Agra? Yep, the desert. Great choice.

Bikaner is in the middle of a desert. It is actually really fascinating seeing the large number of camels used for transporting pretty much everything walking majestically down the road – adding to the goats, dogs and cows that traffic and pedestrians usually have to avoid. Our hostel was really nice, though it was unfortunate that the advertised ‘plunge pool’ was dry – especially regrettable as it really was the hottest days ever while we were there – no temperature readouts, but much hotter than Delhi and we couldn’t even sit in the shade during the hottest afternoon period, let alone actually go out anywhere – our vaguely air-cooled room providing the only respite.

Bikaner was the place I really wanted to visit in India. Forget the Taj Mahal, the Karni Mata temple is the thing to see. I saw it on a Michael Palin episode once and thought it was definitely worth a visit. A typical, working Hindu temple, complete with ornate architecture, devout holy-men, pilgrims and morning rituals honouring Shiva. The only difference is the presence of thousands of rats. The story goes that Karni Mata, the incarnation of someone (I get lost amongst the 330 million Hindu gods that exist) asked the goddess of death (Yama) to reincarnate the son of a story-teller. Yama refused, so Karni Mata turned all the souls of previous story tellers into rats, denying Yama those souls. Thus rats are protected and revered at this temple. Ah religion – it knows how to create a good story! The rats run around the temple freely, and are fed and generally looked after and protected by the priests and the pilgrims that attend the temple. Obviously all the photos (mine and others’) all show lots of rats, giving the impression that you can’t move in the temple for rats. Well, there are a lot of rats there, but you can avoid them if you want/need to. It is apparently auspicious if a rat runs over your feet (you have to be barefoot – it’s a temple), which one did with me, but only because some other guy nearly trod on it while walking and it was running for it’s life! Auspicious for me, maybe not for the rat. It is also lucky to see a white rat, which we didn’t catch sight of during our visit, unfortunately.

I was having a great time,  sitting amongst the rats. Emma humoured me and put up with it but I’m not sure she was quite as enamoured with the place as I was. I didn’t go as far as some of the other pilgrims, who drank the milk from the same bowls the rats were feeding at, you will be glad to hear (even if I had my appetite back at that point, I think that would be stretching my love of rats a little too far!).  The place was a little smelly in the enclosed areas, but generally surprisingly clean, given the circumstances. It was especially funny when our rickshaw driver kept insisting on calling it the ‘temple of the mouse’ which prompted images of a cute Jerry-like figure (from Tom & Jerry) being revered by hundreds of worshippers. The reality was slightly different! Perhaps surprisingly, it isn’t quite as popular as the Taj Mahal.

My main intent for being in India now done, I can sit back and let the rest of this month flow by.

We finished off our brief stay in Bikaner with a trip to the fort (every north-western Indian town needs a fort), which was ok, a couple of Jain temples, one of which (Bhandasar) was really pretty inside – you wouldn’t expect it from seeing the plain, whitewashed exterior – and with a very friendly and helpful resident priest who didn’t even ask for a donation which, given that many/most other people in India seem to just see us as walking wallets, was a pleasant surprise, and a visit to a camel research centre, which was as interesting as it sounds (read that how you wish!), with lots of resident camels. In general we really liked Bikaner – it had a lot of friendly people and a relaxed atmosphere. It was just so damn hot! It restored our faith in ourselves – we can often get quite cynical (yep- even more so than usual), short and snappy with the constant hassles from people in India, and the aspects of the culture that we still struggle with, but in Bikaner we relaxed again a lot more. Walking through the city streets and bazaars having in-depth philosophical discussions such as “Which would you rather have, a camel or an elephant?”. Afternoons and evenings were spent in the tranquillity (and relative cool) of our hostel room, which overlooked a small garden. In the evenings all the kids flew little, colourful  kites from the rooftops and open spaces (seems to be a trend all over India, but very noticeable here) – how they managed to get the kites in the air with so little wind, I don’t know.

We then had only just over a week before we need to be in Mumbai for a flight to the UK, and a lot of places of interest to see, so the remainder of our stay is likely to be a bit of a whistle-stop tour. Unfortunate in some ways, but we are still feeling a little jaded with India, not helped by our illnesses, so it may be for the best anyway – get to a town, see the sights and move on. Not how I usually like to travel, but under the circumstances…

Next stop Jodhpur. Called the blue city because, well, a lot of the buildings are blue. Not easy to see from ground level but it does have a very impressive fort on a hillside overlooking the town and from there it has great views and it becomes obvious how the town got its nickname. The fort itself is really good, and for once the foreigner entrance fee does include a couple of extras, including a really good audio guide. The Maharajah family who owns the fort and has lived there for centuries needed to earn a living all of a sudden when Indira Ghandi changed the constitution to remove any status (and income) from the title of Maharajah – so they turned the fort into a historical museum and tourist attraction and have done a great job. Shunning the usual method of approaching the fort – via rickshaw or taxi – we decided to walk up the hill ourselves, managing to get lost and have to ask a priest for directions to the entrance. At least it was early morning and not the unbearable heat of the day for once!

Moving on from Jodhpur the next day we joined the general free-for-all unreserved seating on the train which, at least for our particular train, wasn’t all that bad. Sitting waiting for the train at Jodhpur station, we realised that we needn’t have visited the rat temple at Bikaner – there were probably similar numbers of rats around the station!

Arrived at our next stop, Pushkar, without any trouble. In fact, the day’s travelling from Jodhpur to Pushkar, using trains and buses, a distance of about 250km, had cost us a total of £2 between us. Bargain!

Pushkar is known as a beautiful town, full of temples, set around a sacred lake. The observant amongst you may have noticed an increase in the tourist screw-up count in this post and may be wondering why. Well, the lake was completely dried up! Unless you call a couple of puddles in the middle of a dust bowl a lake. We had decided upon Pushkar in preference to Udaipur, which is also a beautiful town set on a lake, as friends of ours (Kev & Marie) had had a similar ‘dried up lake’ experience in Udaipur a few years back and we wanted to avoid it.  Maybe we should have checked beforehand! Turns out the lake at Udaipur is gorgeous and water-filled right now. Ho hum. I don’t think I’ll try out Jason’s suggestion in a previous comment to wee in as many holy waters as possible – it may look rather obvious in the middle of a dried up lake.

On the plus side, very few tourists or even pilgrims want to visit a sacred lake that isn’t there, so the rooms are cheap and the place is quiet. “dead”, was in fact the term Emma used to describe it, but it’s actually quite nice being in a quiet place. On further exploration the place is busier than it first seemed – there is a vibrant market area with some interesting shops – a bit like Goa but a bit less ‘hippy’ and a bit more ‘Indian’!