Rajasthan is absolutely full of stunning and odd attractions. There are incredible camel markets, desert treks, entire towns surrounded by open sewers, palaces built in the heart of huge great lakes, and elephants stumbling about the streets painted from head to foot with chalky religious symbols. Like many parts of India, it varies from disturbing and somewhat emotionally wrought, all the way to places that simply take your breath away, and really couldn’t be anywhere else. Somewhere across that array, you’ll find the Karni Mata Temple.
Finding a temple in India is a little like finding a palm tree in Hawaii, or a pub in Ireland, but there’s something very memorable about this one. Karni Mata Temple is a temple where rats are held up as sacred. The temple dates back to the 14th century, and legend has it that the site came about because the God of reincarnation, Yoma, refused to reincarnate a storyteller. Karni Mata, another God, is said to have offered her temple as a point of refuge, allowing all storytellers reincarnation as rats, and a life inside. When the rats die, they are said to once again be reincarnated, as members of Karni Mata’s descendent family. The rats number more than 20,000 in total, so perhaps it’s not surprising that these descendent families are also significant in number – more than 500.
Some people will walk into this temple and walk straight out again. It’s certainly not a place for people with a natural dislike of small furry things: there’s no chance you’ll be able to remain in the temple for any length of time without one running over your feet. In fact, the rats are absolutely everywhere, from the handles to the temples various doors to the ledges around the side of the marble constructs. The descendants of Karni Mata work together to maintain the temple; the rats are fed inside, with dozens crowded around pots of milk, coconut shells and various other foodstuffs that are scattered across the less accessible corners of the temple to try and keep the walkways passable. Some of the families even live within the temple permanently, sweeping away the rats excrement. We can’t imagine it’s the most hygienic of lifestyles, but in the eyes of the families, they’re simply caring for their descendants.
There’s one particular point to consider for the average tourist: be VERY careful where you stand. Standing on a rat would be unpleasant in itself, and very easy to do, but it also comes at a cost: tradition dictates that if you do kill one of the animals, you must replace it with its weight in silver or gold, formed into the shape of a rat. The rats fight amongst themselves over the food, and generally make an incredibly amount of noise, as well as creating a humid, smelly atmosphere. Every so often, you might arrive at the temple and find that the population has been hit by a disease and died down to extremely low numbers, but it soon grows back to its original hefty size. Surprisingly, there are no records at all of any problems for the resident human population, or visitors, stemming from diseases carried by the rats.
Like most Indian temples, you’ll have to remove you shoes to enter. Not so tempting, perhaps, but it’s not optional, and the locals genuinely consider it to be good luck if a rat runs across your bare feet. Another idea that’s meant to bring good luck is spotting an albino rat, at any one time, there are unlikely to be more than ten in the entire population. If you arrive around sundown, or even in the middle of the night, the lethargy of the midday heat disappears, and the rats seem to storm about the temple, collecting food, mating, and generally behaving with a frightening level of energy. A reason to head in the middle of the day or the dead of night? We’ll leave that one up to you…
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