Desert Rats

The past few days have found me pootling around Western Rajastan and the Thar Desert. Wow this place is hot. Here is classic Rajput country. The handful of creamy sandstone towns that dot the desert are each dominated by a magnificent palace citadel where the wealth on display of the former maharajhas is simply staggering to see. It's not easy to comprehend from where that wealth derived (other than plunder and pillage), since the land here is exceedingly poor. In the villages you still see people living in thatched mud huts, and turbaned men out in the 'fields' using camel drawn ploughs to plough a soil that is vitually all sand.

The craftsmanship you see, especially in ornate exterior stone carving is quite astonishing. The palaces and old town houses are exuberant with finely carved latticework windows that ensured noblewomen in past times kept the 'purdah', hiding themselves away from the prying eyes of horny men. They could look out on the world below their window, but the outside world could not look in. I particularly liked Jaisalmer, a very highly atmospheric town with twisted, narrow streets and suprisingly few scars from modern tourism. Jodphur has a slightly more aggressive feel to it somehow, but it is undeniably a beautiful sight when viewed from the palace ramparts looking down at twilight on the blue-painted houses.

India has some strange sights to behold, but perhaps none stranger than the worship of rats at a Hindu temple close to Bikaner. The colony of rodents are held to be the reincarnations of dead storytellers and have a free run of the temple, where worshippers feed them milk and rice. It's held to be highly auspicious to have a rat run over your bare foot. Not exactly what you want to hear as you jostle your way through the entrance door with nowhere to run when the rats detect your good karma. Well, I headed inside having removed my shoes and crossed my fingers that it wasn't going to be my lucky day. It wasn't fortunately ...and unfortunately, as I discovered a little later that evening when I twisted my ankle falling down some steps after a few light ales.

Having made it to Jodphur, I've bid farewell to the group and am heading off by train to Mumbai, there to catch a plane to Istanbul. I will have been travelling for exactly 150 days overland to get this far. It really feels like cheating to clamber aboard a plane after more than 25,000 km travelling by road, rail and sea.