Rat-tastic

Yes. We are in the rat temple. There are THOUSANDS (this is in no way an exaggeration) of rats. They are running around. They are feasting on the food that is made for them by the vat in the corner. In spite of the fact that they are well fed and sheltered, their fur looks matted and funky. (Note that we are aware that 30,000 people die of rabies each year in India, according to Lonely Planet.) There is fear in our eyes. There are rats scurrying around our toes. We are sweating. Our taxi driver wants us to follow him into a hallway, to get to another part of the temple...we are frozen in our tracks, staring at the hallway. It is like running the gauntlet. Hundreds of rats scurry back and forth, wall to wall, while people shuffle through, with nowhere to run or hide. We do not want to offend our taxi driver, who is kissing the walls and having a generally wonderful religious experience. So we suck it up and go, rat turds and sugary rat food crunching beneath our feet. We have agreed that it was possibly the most bizarre experience of our lives.

This being a temple, we are BAREFOOT, of course.

But what is on that sign, hanging above the temple?
We had read in Lonely Planet about a bizarre temple about 30k from our intended destination, where it is believed that the rats are the reincarnated souls of either a goddess's family or story tellers (different stories in different guidebooks). We wonder, could this be it?

Here I am, outside of the seemingly normal looking temple. Let's go in, shall we?

From Kerala, we flew up to Jodhpur, the "blue city," in the state of Rajastan. Ah, Rajastan. This is where things start to get interesting! From Jodhpur, we needed to get to Bikaner, a city about 70 kilometers from the Pakistan border, where we would embark on our camel safari. After some hard days of traveling, we decided to go by car, rather than by train. Oh, and thank goodness we did, because otherwise we would have missed a very special temple that our taxi driver wanted to stop at along the way...

After returning from the beach, we went to a show of traditional Keralan (Kerala is one of the states in India, in the south) play/art/dance demonstration at which this awesomely bizarre character was highlighted.

Backpacker Beach Paradise

Jeff and I have landed in backpackers' beach paradise. We ditched our prior rough plan to head to a wildlife reserve (where supposedly there are elephants and tigers, although we have yet to meet anyone who has been there and actually seen anything more than a couple of monkeys) and opted instead for a beach town pretty far south down the coast called Varkala. Good choice! It's like the best beach we've been to in Thailand or Vietnam, but better. Jeff commented that its kind of like the beach in "The Beach," but less creepy. So what turned into 2 nights' stay has become 4, and we will be here until we are forced to leave to fly back north for our camel safari in the desert.