Udaipur, the blue city, stayed into our mind mostly as the city with narrow streets with high buildings, where hundreds of motorcycles and rickshaws made the air almost unbreathable. Aside from that, the view to the city from high maharaja's fort was quite interesting and the city really deserve its name - "Blue city".
View from our hotel balcony to the Maharaja's fort
Although most kids that tried to get our intention (and much more) in India were beggar kids, then sometimes it also happened that a school kid approached us and asked for a photo. These were really nice contacts, which resulted in very cute pictures :-)
Enjoying the newspaper on the balcony
In the entrance of Maharaja's fort. This was all we saw, since the entrance ticket for white skin was too expensive for us.
At the train station
From Udaipur we headed to Bikaner. We had been waiting for this place with a huge excitement the whole trip. And why? Because of one temple there. And even though we were so awfully exhausted of all kinds of Hindu temples, which are really on each corner in India, this temple was something special.
Branko enjoying the train ride through desert
Thar desert
Small desert village
BIKANER and RAT TEMPLE
It's true ! They have a temple, where they worship rats ! 30 000 rats are running around the temple and its courtyard and having luxurious life that even most Indians have never known. The legend says, that, Karni Mata, the 14th century mystic and an incarnation of Hindu goddess Durga, begged the God of Death, Yama, to restore the life of a son of a storyteller. When the God of Death refused it, Karni Mata got angry and incarnated the dead son and all the other storytellers into rats.
So don't be afraid of those small innocent rats in the temple, they are actually not who they seam to be !
Interesting fact about the temple is that no rat from outside the temple goes in and vice versa.
Rat temple. When entering to the temple, shoes must be removed, like in most of Hindu temples.
Never-ending milk
People bring food for rats and there are locals who take care that the bowls of milk are always filled. The courtyard of the temple is covered with net, to keep the birds of pray feeding on the holy rats. So, rats in the temple don't have to worry about anything, thus they can sleep where ever and whenever they feel like it.
There have been made hundreds of holes into the walls of the temple by local people, to make the life of rats even more comfortable.
And it is only a blessing when a rat runes over you bare foot ;-)
There are also supposed to be 4 albino rats in the temple and seeing them is a special luck. Unfortunately that big luck did not show itself to us.
Newly married couple with their companions have come to the rat temple to get blessing.
Back in Bikaner:
Peeing camel with extremely heavy load
Very common and the most terrible picture from Indian streets- burning rubbish
JAIPUR
In Jaipur old town market we experienced the most intense market style ever. Intense in the way that, it was almost impossible to pass the street in front of some shops, because the shop-keepers were simply standing on your way with some piece of cloth like matadors and not letting us go through, at the same time trying to convince you "You like it ! It´s too good !"
This kind of market style made us very tense and we were walking by as quickly as possible not even paying attention to things that we might have liked. At some point one shop-keeper stopped us and asked, why foreigners are ignoring them when they try to show them some nice cloths or other things. We explained that western markets give people some space and freedom to decide what they like and what not, so foreigners are not used to this kind of market here. The shop-keeper said: "but if you come to the other country and other culture, you should be able to adapt yourself to it."
Hmm, what on Earth were we then doing all those months in India other than trying to adapt ourselves to the culture. In some case it worked, in some case, what is enough is enough.
When and Indian person comes to Europe, will he adapt himself completely to the western customs and culture ?
One of the many gates into the old town.
The hectic street of the old town of Jaipur
Indian people have some kind of special thing with goats, they simply have to dress them ! No cows, no dogs, no pigs, but only goats are walking around - dressed.
Hava Mahal, part of the east wall of the City Palace complex. Its main purpose was to let the ladies of royal harem watch the royal possessions and life on street, without people from street seeing them, because of the very small windows.
An interesting place in Jaipur was Jantar Mantar. In translation it means "measuring" "instrument" (more nicer translation goes like this : 'Instruments of Measuring the Harmony of the Heavens',). It was built in 18th century by one Maharaja who was crazy about astronomy and science. Each instrument in the park was used for some astronomical measurement, with not much worse accuracy than nowadays.
Jantar Mantar garden. On the background the World's biggest sun dial.
With Tisbet from Venezuela
Another sun dial
Some kind of instrument for measuring the location of zodiacs in the sky
Friendly guy with huge turban enjoying ganja
