About thirty kilometers south of Bikaner lies, hands down, the most bizarre place I’ve ever visited. The Karni Mata Temple is a beautiful marble temple, but upon arriving and removing one’s shoes, the carving on the doors make it clear that this is no ordinary Hindu temple. The depictions of rodents foreshadow what is about to become apparent within a couple of steps: running around throughout the temple are thousands — perhaps tens-of-thousands — of rats.

The devout worshipers at the temple believe that Karni Mata — a female Hindu sage who is worshipped — was promised by the goddess of death, Yama, that all of her male descendants would be reborn as rats at this temple. Therefore the rats at the temple are regarded as sacred incarnations of Karni Mata.

Though obviously I shouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest, knowing I was about to enter a rat temple, as soon as I saw my first rat in the hallway, I was definitely taken aback. It’s such a natural human impulse to flee from rats, that to see one and then continue towards it (and thousands others) is a strange behavior, indeed. The outer courtyard isn’t swarming with rats as they congregate in areas filled with food — brought as offerings by worshippers. Inside a covered room within the temple lies the holiest part of the temple, and, needless to say, lots more rats.

It is believed to be good luck to see one of the five white rats that are at the temple. As my friends and I were looking for one, we headed into a dark, damp, corner where some people had congregated. As I tried to peer in, I felt the bizarre sensation of a rat brush against my bare foot. As soon as I felt the slightest brush against my skin, I quickly backpedaled — my heart beating a bit faster — to a more rat-free zone. Fortunately for me, it’s also considered good luck to have a rat run up to your foot, so while seeking out one form of good luck, I received another such form — albeit without my permission. I walked very carefully throughout the temple, shuffling my feet when I could, because if you step on a rat, you are implored to purchase a silver statue to put down in its place.

I believe the photo I had my friend take of me sums up a lot of my experience at the rat temple. Wanting to prove to the world that I had visited the rat temple – and perhaps to freak out my Mom a bit – I searched for the corner of the temple with the highest rat density. With a bit of trepidation I approached, handed my friend my camera, and squatted down, turning my back to hundreds, perhaps thousands of rats. I smiled, proudly, at my sense of accomplishment putting myself so close to these rodents. My friend, though, ever the perfectionist, took his sweet time taking the photograph, switching settings, zooming in and zooming out to get just the right shot. As I sat there, waiting, coming to terms with just how many rats there were behind just one of me, my ear-to-ear grin was quickly deflating. My lips sunk, my eyebrows raised up, and I could almost feel the rats coming at me from behind. The end result is a nicely composed photo, in which my face can only be described as my “take this F-ing picture now” face.

I came away from the temple with dirty feet, some (unsolicited) good luck, and a photo that proves that – even if I was not too happy about it – I survived a temple full of rats.

Thanks to Twenty-Something Travel for publishing this story!  You can check out the original over at Twenty-SomethingTravel.com, as well as lots of comments from people freaked out by just the thought of visiting the temple. 

Everyone says that to experience humanity, you’ve got to ride an Indian train. Well, now I can say that I have — and I have lived to tell about it.

The berths are actually much more comfortable than people make them out to be, and there are even Chaiwallas that wander up and down the aisles offering hot tea in very-non-insulated cups. We even had the very rare veggie-cutlet-walla offering a dinner wrapped in tin foil (I declined).

We had the pleasure of seeing perhaps the most disgusting woman I’ve ever been around sitting across from us. Like clockwork, every 20 minutes or so, she would let out huge burps. I’m not talking little belches, I’m talking about the kind of burp that is easily straddling the line of vomit. Her burping, if I can even call it that, was so loud, that even with my headphones on, my face still displayed a visceral reaction to the noise. But the best part is that she clearly did not care at all, and thought nothing of her guttural noises.

Having experienced (survived?) an overnight train in Russia, I still remember vividly the bathroom on the train, so I was anxious to see how the Indian one compares. Though the Russian train does get points for having a western style toilet (as opposed to a “hole” on the Indian train), I have to say, the Indian one was definitely less gross than the Russian one. That said, I’m pretty sure using the sink in the bathroom will actually make your hands less clean.

At about 8PM we saw a beautiful sunset developing behind the tinted windows. Wanting a better view, we explored to find a clear window, but having failed, we decided to see if we could just open the train door. And, despite the obvious safety and security concerns, the door opened right up, and we were greeted with a gorgeous, glowing sunset to stare at as our train click-clacked along.

In all, I found the train to be a pretty good way to travel — but, if you are ever on one, please, please, make sure to avoid a woman belching her way from Jodhpur to Mumbai.

Thanks so Sosauce.com for publishing this article last week…you can read it on their blog, here.

Having eaten Indian food for all but about three meals during my three months in India (and let me tell you pizza has never tasted so good), I became interested in learning a little more about the cuisine. So, my friends and I decided to take Indian cooking lessons while visiting the northern town of Udaipur.

The class, which began at 5:30PM and ran until well after 10PM, was taught by an interesting woman named Shashi out of her own home and kitchen. Her husband, sadly, was killed a couple of years back, and she has now managed to turn her cooking lessons into a way to support her family. Though desperate for money after a gross miscarriage of justice, because of her high-caste status, she had to furtively clean clothes and provide other services discretely. Once, after randomly meeting an Irishman who suggested she start cooking lessons, she began learning English, and visitors volunteered to translate her recipes into their respective languages. Within a month she had set up a cooking school, and she hasn’t looked back since! We were welcomed in, offered stools to sit on, and handed a printout of the recipes she would be teaching us during the night (she also warned us to make sure we came hungry, which was very good advice). The lesson began much as a coach prepares his players for a big game, talking us through the gameplan for the dinner.

Up first was the traditional Indian tea: chai. It’s made by boiling (really rich whole) milk, adding in black tea, and then a delicious combination of cardamon, peppercorns and fresh ginger. As we sat drinking our tea, we began preparing our appetizer: vegetable pakora. The best way to describe vegetable pakora would be “Indian tempura,” as it consists of vegetables coated in chickpea flour and spices and then deep fried. We began with just onions and potatoes, but then made a more interesting concoction of chopped vegetables (cabbage, cauliflower and carrot) mixed with peas, and then fried to a crisp. The pakora were served with two chutneys we made — one a spicy, cilantro-dominated sauce; the other, a sweet mango one, with hints of chili powder.

We then began preparing the main dishes, starting with a chickpea and tomato masala. Shashi had soaked the chickpeas for about 24 hours to soften them up, and then steamed them for about 15 minutes while we prepared the masala. We got to decide how spicy to make it, and since the food actually hadn’t been as spicy there as I had expected (I think that even when we asked for things spicy, people saw our American faces, and took it easy on us), we were liberal with the chilies. As with a lot of Indian food, there was plenty of oil as we cooked it all up, and then set it aside in a big silver serving bowl covered with a matching plate to keep it warm as we moved on to our next dish. To accompany the masala, we learned how to make vegetable palau. I finally got something cleared up that had confused me for a while — both palau and biryani are vegetables with rice, but the palau is more vegetable-dominated, while the biryani skews towards the rice side. This was a fairly simple preparation with cauliflower, cabbage, capsicum (i.e. green pepper), and tomato sauteed with cooked basmati rice. It was soon covered and put aside before we moved on to the main event: bread making.

We made two kinds of bread: naan and chapatti. As we prepared to make the bread, Shashi told one of my friends to take off her shoes. “I love her, but if she somehow puts her feet in the dough, there is no way I am eating it!” I thought to myself. Thankfully, she just needed to remove her shoes to sit down to get better leverage for kneading. The naan, to my surprise has a lot of curd and sugar in it, and is based on refined flour, while the chapatti is simply whole-wheat flower, water, and salt. Once the two doughs were made, we formed a nice assembly line where we formed balls of the dough, kneaded it and got rid of any air bubbles, rolled it into a thin pancake, and then cooked them. For the chapatti, in cooking it, one places it on a flat pan, and presses down on it with a towel, while spinning it around to cook it evenly. After a couple of minutes bubbles begin to rise, which we gently pushed down while twisting the bread around the grill.

We also got to experiment with a couple of other varieties, including a potato-filled bread, where I mashed potatoes with my hands, mixed in chili powder, and incredibly potent lemon salt, forming Indian mashed potatoes. A generous portion is then placed in the middle of the dough, which is folded over the potato as if making a samosa. The mound of potato is then flattened, and painted (repeatedly!) with oil before being grilled. For our sweet, we had chapati which we coated with ghee (refined butter), confectioner’s sugar, and coconut, before folding it in two, and coating it again. And again. And again. And then grilled it up. I played grill-master for a while, which was stressful as there are about six different instruments to use for turning, twisting, lifting, and moving the various breads, and I seemed to always choose the incorrect one. That said, there were no chapatti catastrophes under my watch. At about 10PM — after at least four hours in the kitchen — we sat down to the feast we had created. Everything tasted fantastic, though the highlights were definitely the potato-stuffed, and the sweet-chappatis. The chickpea masala had an intense flavor — perhaps from sitting covered for a couple of hours — and made for a great accompaniment to the various breads. Shashi also impressed upon us that by learning the basic sauces, we could then experiment with our own favorite vegetables, substituting them for the ones we used in the pakora, the masala, and the palau.

I came away from the dinner incredibly stuffed, and also with a new appreciation for the cuisine I had been eating for the last ten weeks. As much as I enjoyed the food, friends have asked me upon my return if I still want to eat Indian food. My response, after about 250 meals of Indian food this summer: no Indian food for me until 2010! But come the new year, if you need a chapatti griller, I’m your man.

I was thrilled to see that my travel story, “Seeking Out Rats in India,” on my visit to the “Rat Temple” in India was selected by judges as a finalist for the 2009 TNT Travel Writing Awards.  I’d love if it you checked out the article, and, if you feel so inclined, voted to help get it published in their magazine / help me win some free travel in Europe!  Thanks!