Bikaner's Rats, Jodhpur's Fort and Abu's Mountain- Feb 24-March 03 2015

After a nice ride on the local RTDC bus from Nawalgarh we arrived to Bikaner and stayed at Shanti guesthouse (600 Rs) run by the honest and knowledgeable Guri and his lovely wife. On the really small roof top of the guest house we met Nicole and Renee from Germany and enjoyed spending the evenings there drinking beer and exchanging travel stories. We checked out the town's Junagarh Fort which was alright but nothing special, you get a free guided tour included in the price of the ticket. We later explored the old city and visited the Jain temple Seth Bhandasar that is the only Jain temple that has colorful paintings on the walls inside. From there we continued  back to our guesthouse through the lovely bazaars of Bikaner that are dotted with nice Havelis along the way.

We took a train (40Rs 40 Min) to the infamous Karni Mata temple  a.k.a Rat Temple (30 Rs for camera). The temple is not coverd with rats like we imagined but there are quite a lot of them hanging around (approximately 20,000 rats a.k.a kabba). The rats in the temple are kind of cute since they are well taken care of and clean and are fed a lot of sweets and  milk from the temple workers and visitors so they don't really care about the people surrounding them. From the temple we went back to Bikaner by local bus (50 Rs, 50 min).

The next day we continued to Jodhpur a.k.a the Blue city, by train ( 180 Rs sleeper class 6 Hours) and settled in the cute  Jodhpur Heritge Haveli guesthouse (400 Rs Attached bathroom and good wifi) that is in the clock tower backpacker area.  We set out to climb to the marvelous Jaswant Thada (50 Rs. per person)sometimes referred to as a "mini Taj-Mahal) which is close to the city's famous and impressive Mehrangarh Fort (400 Rs per person and includes a audio guide) where you can get a good view of the old blue city. We went down from the fort through the blue city and had nice lunch in Dev's Castle View guesthouse. Next we continued to Umaid Bhawan Palace (25 Rs entry fee, auto rickshaw from old city is 150 Rs) that looks beautiful from afar but is not that amazing inside, since you can see only a small part of it that is a not really interesting museum because most of the palace has been turned into a luxury hotel of the Taj group and another part of it is the residency of the remaining Jodhpur royal family.

Next day we went on an organized tour "Bishnu Village safari" that we booked  through our guesthouse (700Rs per person Including lunch). We were picked up by a small jeep and were joined by our new great friend Matt from Germany/South Africa/Canada who writes one of the best travel blogs together with his wife (Konni). Both are excellent photographers and have been travelling the globe for about 15 years and you can read about their fascinating adventures here. Matt is also one of the reasons that inspired and pushed us to publish this blog (Thanks  Matt!).

Going back to the tour: we started with the monument dedicated to the 363 Bishoni villagers who sacrificed their lives to protect the sacred Khejri trees from been cut down. From there we continued to a lake maintained by the local forest department that serves the local wildlife and the migrating birds of the area. we visited the small village of Ratanda where we had a somewhat touristy but interesting demonstration of a traditional opium ceremony by a friendly local family who welcomed us into their simple mud home. Next we convinced our driver (200 Rs extra) to take us to one of India's weirdest temples Om Baba a.k.a Bullet Baba, that is an open temple next to the highway dedicated to a local member of the royal family that died here in an accident crushing his royal Enfield bike into a tree, and supposedly after police took his bike to the local police station the bike "miraculously" found its way back to the crush site (twice). We concluded our tour with a home cooked lunch in the home of a family of weavers who also own a homestay in the village of Salawas and enjoyed really nice and unique Rajasthani food including millet chapatis and cabbage curry.

After "enjoying" the heat of Rajasthan we travelled up to the cool Mount Abu, the only hill station in the state, (bus 310 Rs to Abu Road and from there another 1-hour bus up the mountain to the town 30Rs) where we ate really good street food and had nice coffee at cafe Shikibo, pampered ourselves in a nice hotel (Hotel Ganesh 1000 Rs) and went on a day trek (trekking and hiking Mount Abu- 660Rs per person) where we met Daniel (Australia) and Georgina (Spain) that were a wonderful couple to hang out with and go see the sunset from the edge of the lake. We visited a few temples including a Shiva temple, a Hanuman temple with a really big statue of him and of course the Jain Delwara temple that has some of the best marble carvings I've seen (unfortunately no photos allowed inside).

Mount Abu also gave us an interesting glimpse to the philosophy of Brahma Kumaris at their universal peace hall. We received a free tour in the complex from a French "brother" who gave us a simple introduction to their teachings without being preachy.

After four days in the mountains we said goodbye and moved on the the White city of Udaipur.