rajasthan

Inside Bikaner Fort

+++ More pics at

ww.picturetrail.com/k-e-i-t-h-m

Now a lightning tour
of parts of Rajasthan by car, with my very good driver Nandu.

First stop Mandawa, a dusty little town that got rich on the opium trade and has since fallen asleep. The town has many spectacular mechants' houses, or haveli, now mostly run to ruin, and I did a quick tour of them with a friendly local guide who got me into them (they are still lived in) for 10 or 20 rupees a time. So I was there looking at teh carved stonework and faading frescos as the families were making their supper. All very frinedly but slightly odd. They are mostly arranged around an outer courtyard (for entertaining) and an inner courtyard (for the family - the women were kept in purdah). My hotel is one of these haveli but has been well restored and makes a very comfortable first night stop on the road west.

Next day and another long drive, through countryside getting drier and drier, and villages poorer and poorer. Though the costumes, particulalry the women, get more and more colourful. I've noticed when you see 3 Indians together, they somehow manage to colour coordinate in the most spectacular way possible, so there will be sienna, electric blue and yellow ochre. Or lime green, that wonderful rich Rajasthani red and mauve. I don't know how they do it, consciously or not, but do it they do, whether it's ladies in saris or men in shirts. Colour is everything here, everywhere and on everyone, shouting out from the dull plae yellow soil and dark green vegetation.

Before my next night's stop at Bikaner, Nandu swerves off the main road, saying we are going to the Rat Temple, just outside. I've heard of it, but wasnt quite prepared for it. Actually the rats - and there are literally hundreds, are sweet when you see them. None of them huge, and many of them just babies. I got into an enclosure full of them where i don't think I was supposed to be, and there was a whole little rat community going on. Rats playing, rats fighting, rats sleeping, rats eating and drinking big plates of milk kindly put out by the temple authorities, curious rats, friendly rats, fighting rats, sleeping rats, rats in big jumbled groups, even a white rat, whch is supposed to be very lucky, although this one didn't looked a bit off-colour (!) and maybe wouldn't see out the night. As I was photographing, I felt a a little tickling sesation on my foot, and there was one running across my socked foot (no shoes alowed in the temple of course). I think the point of it is that even rats have souls, and may have been people once, so treat thej with respect and maybe they will treat you the same.

Bikaner has another of Rajasthan's wonderful forst. This one seems to have a different wing - or even palace - built by each successive maharaj, some of them exquisite, some of them bizarre. The city centre was anic but great fun. I watched as peole played dare with the railway crossing barriers - the line runsright through the town, and why wait for the barrier to go up when you an just dash across. The problem is that everyone was dooing it in both directions and there was soon a hopeless jam spilling onto the track. Somehow it all got sorted before the train plodded past.