over their tails . Children dressed up as deities and girls with charcoallined , mysterious eyes offered to pose for photos for a few rupees . Highly decorated camels pulled carts for hire and other carts sold dried camel dung for cooking fires .
In the bazaar at the edge of town traders had set up elaborate stalls shaded with colourful cloths . We recognised the hippie clothes , handmade jewellery and leather wares that had been for sale in the backpacker hotspots in the Himalayas just weeks before . Punters had come from far and wide to buy material for saris and salwar kameez ’ and bracelets and decorations for festivals and occasions . I bought a hand-crafted leather diary and was surprised to receive it wrapped in a cloth-bag made from offcuts . It turns out Pushkar was a plastic-bag free town long before many cities in our home in Europe had even considered the idea .
The festival lasted several days , and we were sure not to miss the competitions for best dressed camel . Each competitor tried to outdo the next with elaborately painted camels dressed in throws of fancy material , neon yellow , pink and green tassels dangling off elaborately crocheted throws and bright pom-poms on the nose . For the camel dancing performances the animals bopped to the beat of drums with their front legs in the air , hopped onto several trampolines stacked high , lay obediently on the ground with their master posing on their neck , and bowed deeply toward the judges .
For lunch we avoided the hippie restaurants cooking to the tastes of western tourists and ate at a local dhaba instead . These are roadside restaurants usually catering to truckers passing through . There is no menu . Instead , there are one or sometimes two pots of dal fry and maybe a vegetable curry and you have whatever is in them , served with as many chapatis as you need to mop it all up . A busy dhaba is a sign for good food freshly prepared and nothing is sitting around for long so you can be relatively sure to avoid Delhi-belly . And since they are not aimed at tourists , they serve the spicy , ‘ real ’ Indian food .
We ’ d made it a habit to lunch at dhabas on our ride across India and quite naturally went to the dhaba in Puskar , too . The owners were surprised but super happy to see us westerners walk in . The slightly tipsy local with bleach blonde hair started a slurred conversation and before we knew it , the family were dragging us behind the counter to try our hand at making chapatis .
When the festival came to a close , we were ready to hit the road again and find the Karni Mata Rat Temple - the only temple in the world where rats are worshipped . According to hindu legend Karni Mata ’ s son drowned while drinking from a lake . The bereaved mother begged Yama , the god of death , to revive him . Yama refused at first , but then agreed to reincarnate him and all her sons as rats . Worshipers bring milk , grain and sweets for the rats and it is considered lucky to see a white rat , as these are believed to be Karni Mata and her sons themselves .
We arrived at the dark red temple in the evening and as per custom removed our shoes before going in . The rats were not shy and rushed this way and that , happily scurrying across our bare feet . In true rat fashion the place was quite dirty with mucky trails on walls and around holes where rats were popping in and out . Left-over grains and little stones poked us as we wandered about watching the rats clamber through wrought iron gates , run along the walls , jump up steps and search the milk bowls for a few last drops . We even spotted a couple of white rats in a pile of furry bodies on a tall ledge behind a wire fence .
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