Day 394: Holy Rats!

Bikaner – Pushkar, India

Entry written by Anneleen:

On our way from Bikaner to Pushkar, we visited the Rat Temple. Tine, who is normally really afraid of rats, was really brave and entered the Rat Temple on bare feet with us. Everywhere we looked there were rats, crawling next to our feet. People fed them with milk and other food.

After this really nice experience we proceeded to Pushkar. Because of the floods, it was hard to get there. We had to ghost ride for a while. In Pushkar we went to a really nice Italian restaurant where we had pizza.

Then we went to the temple of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. His symbol is the lotus flower. We also visited the holy Sarovar lake of Pushkar. A local guy brought us there, afterwards we know why. When we got there the priests seperated us and performed a ritual with us. We had to do some symbolic things and had to say some prayers in Hindi for our ourselves, our family and our friends. Afterwards they asked a lot of money, around 7000 rupies. They got really mad when we didn’t want to give them the money, so we left really quick and went back to our hotel.