Good old sight-seeing (without sights)

Hello all, greetings from Jaiselmer, another town on the India Pakistan border. I have a few sights to catch up on since the last post. I’m afraid the photos will have to continue to go uncommented as blogspot insists on being html, or not, I have no idea, but the point is I have limited use of the tricks afforded by the program. Actually, at the moment I cannot upload images at all, so that will have to wait a bit. Anwyay, getting to it:

There are two sights unique (so far as I know) in the eastern world. The first is a camel farm, where camels are bred, raised, and generally kept for farmers or sold at action or to the army. The second is the rat temple. Which is a temple full of rats. First, the camel farm.

It is outside of Bikaner, with a center and outlying fields. The center focused on the research, breeding and birthing grounds. They serve and sell camel milk, ice cream, lassis (like a milk shake) and other camel related things. The studs were kept in one smelly area (they are in a high season and rutting, which gives a pungent order, like goats I think but much stronger). There are four kinds of camels, and they are researching the different qualities of mixes. We saw a maternity area of sorts where babies (after a 13 month gestation) age 1-3 days spent time with the females. The camels can walk around about 6 hours after they are born, and weigh an astounding 40kg at birth. We actually saw a birth taking place, men pulling the calf out of the mother and placing it in front of her, removing the sac from the calf, and helping it take its first breath. It was inspiring and beautiful - even suspenceful, the calf didn’t breathe for about a minute – the workers went about hitting its head and slapping its back legs until it was breathing, fast and short, in the sand. The mother, massive, finally stood and walked a step or two forward and nuzzled the calf before settling in the sand with it in front of her. Other calves bleating for mothers, the men standing back and watching the mother’s first moments with the calf. I have to say, that of all the young things in the world which enjoy ugly immunity for a period of time, the camel is ugly from day one. I could enjoy spending time with them, they are majestic creatures, capable efficient machines, but they are not attractive.

After the camel farm we headed to the rat temple, a drive outside of town. My rat-anxiety wasn’t enough to keep me awake, and I woke up at the temple feeling even good about going. I had been anxious at the prospect of wandering around a temple full of rats in my socks or barefoot (no shoes allowed, as always). The man gave us a history, what I’ll call the mythology of the place. So 14th century, Karni Mata, an incarnation of the god Durga, asked Yama, god of the dead, to bring the son of a storyteller back to life (selflessly I’m sure…). Yama said no deal, as the gods of the dead tend to do, so Karni Mata reincarnated all of the dead at rats, essentially taking the souls away from Yama. Worshipers believe that the rats are incarnated family or friends and bring sweets and milk to feed them. The temple is not ‘full,’ but there were a lot of rats around. The story of the place is that the rats no only no not leave, but that they also have never bitten anyone, and that the town has enjoyed immunity from the bubonic plague, and further that if someone suffers from the plague, they will be healed if they travel to the rat temple. The white rat (a white rat) is good luck, and an entrepreneur hoping to start would need to see a white rat to be given the go ahead on his plans. Married couples travel there to have their wedding blessed (we saw two couples, in full dress at the temple). Also, a rat crossing your feet is good luck, of course. (I would use similar language and consideration talking about the Jesus story, personally – I think it can be easy to turn one’s nose up at this story, so that helped me with perspective.) I made some short videos of the temple because the squeamish feeling (which was almost gone even in the ten minutes we were there) comes from the movement I think, and there was a lot of that).

Up next comes Jaiselmer, a city within and around a giant fort. It is calm in the fort, relatively quiet, and feels much less harried than the cities I’d been in (like Bikaner but a real city – Bikaner is also 800,00 people). I met up with Molly of the camel tour, and we wandered around the city for a while today having a gander at this and that. The absolute highlight for me were the Jain temples. (grammar question: highlight was jain temples? Highlight were jain temples? Highlights were jain temple? Anyway) These contained hundreds of intricately carved sandstone statues, 6,666 buddha statues (666?) and had incredible light and shadow. It reminded me of the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, carved by the knights templar, but much more impressive. I’ll post a few images of that at the end here, I’m thinking of going back even to see them again.

Today some internet time in the morning, Molly and I were thinking about renting a motorcycle, though I am sure we would either get lost or die on the road, so we are still considering. In health news the body is feeling better! That is a relief! And I’m consequently feeling much better about being here in general. I’m glad to finally post some sightseeing rather than navel gazing, though both in their time I guess. Hopefully photos will follow shortly. Thanks for reading!