...And that's Rat for the day!

......Sorry for the ' cheesy' introduction :P

Today at work was a research and Documentation day. We  worked on researching the different textile techniques.

Later that evening we all went on a trip to the famously known Rat Temple (Karni Mata) 30km outside Bikaner.
The temples dedicated to an early 15th century mystic reincarnation of Goddess Durga. Its believed the souls of the Charans (devotees of Mata) is in the rats. Hundreds of rats run freely through the temple they are given gifts of worship and are fed milk and Laddu. They are all considered sacred and a miracle at the time of the plague the rats in the temple were untouched. It is considered a blessing of good luck to see a white rat in the temple as its supposed to be a reincarnation of the goddess or her sons, also if a rat runs on your feet.  we all spotted two white rats and made our wishes one was more on the  ginger side!   we also had some baby rats run over our feet. so we've obviously got some good karma & luck on our side.

  For us new to India it struck a sense of awe and a feeling of surreal environment, for some us us we had to overcome a squeamish side. It was such an amazing scene to witness. it was literally an ocean of rats you can tell they have taken residence of this holy place for a long time.

We then went to another temple where she used to worship which rats had also take residence in. The other temple had beautiful rajasthan metal design doors and architecture and was a place the goddess would also worship in there was trees and different dimensions to the building it was really spectacular.