Visiting India’s Rat Temple

(Rat Alert!)

It is definitely the strangest temple I have ever been to and I have been to a lot. This one is the Karni Mata Temple in Dashnok, India, and is a temple that honors rats.

I’ve never been very fond of the rodents. My mom had a paralyzing fear of rats and mice and if you so much as even mentioned the words in her presence, she would have nightmares that night.

I remember as a young boy, my friends and I had gone over to the nearby farm fields and caught dozens, probably over a hundred mice in a big cardboard box. We carefully carried it home and proudly showed it off to our parents. My mother had a fit, her face drained of all color, and her eyes were like saucers as she ran screaming back into the house. We were told to “get rid of them immediately!”

We were sorry to see them go but we did as we were told and as we opened the box, we set them free. Well, you can imagine our entire neighborhood had a mouse problem for years to come.

I lived in Alberta in Western Canada which is a rat-free zone. Imagine an area the size of Texas and NO rats. The province actually has rat patrols that keep an eye on the provincial boundaries and the U.S. border, checking the cargo of transport trucks for rats that may have hitched a ride and setting traps to make sure none wander into the province. Whenever one would appear, it would make the newspapers.

So all this is to say that I grew up with a wariness about rats. That was highlighted even more when I moved to Toronto and we had them in the old house I lived in, (you could hear them scurrying through the walls and floorboards between apartments.) It used to freak me out!

I don’t have a problem with pet rats and can even hold and pet them. But it was with more than a little trepidation that I decided to visit the “Holy Rat Temple” during my visit to India.

Since it is a temple you have to be respectful; remove your shoes and socks and don’t go running around screaming to get out. And that may be exactly what you want to do because as you walk around the temple you are barefoot and stepping on rat food, rat pooh, and any other horrors you can imagine.

During the entire journey from Pushkar to Bikaner, I braced myself for the temple, saying “they are only rats, how bad could it be?”

Well as I waited in line to walk inside, a woman in front of me suddenly screamed and tried to run out the door. The only non-Indians were me and another couple, ironically the squeals that occasionally echoed through the temple were the Hindu women.

An estimated 20 to 25 thousand rats are living at the Karni Mata temple, some of which are running around, oblivious to the humans in the room. Sometimes they would come up to your feet and sniff. It’s considered auspicious (a good thing) if one runs across your feet, and some people (my driver included) would walk up to a bunch of the critters and try to encourage them to do just that. I didn’t try it.

It’s also supposed to be good luck if you see a white rat, so I kept my eyes wide open but no such luck. The few white rats that live at the temple are said to be the reincarnation of the goddess Karni Mata and her sons.

Still, it certainly was not as bad an experience as I expected, possibly because I was focused on not stepping on one, (if you accidentally step on one and kill it, temple rules state you must replace the rat with one made of gold or silver) and trying to take lots of photos. If you visit, don’t forget to look around though, the front of the temple is made out of marble and the front doors are of solid silver and there are beautifully painted murals over the entrance that I’m sure most people miss.

I am somewhat of a germaphobe, so that made the temple visit even more of a challenge for me. So of course, when it was over, I couldn’t wait to get to my hotel to scrub my feet and take off my socks (and throw them out.) In fact, after a good scrubbing in the tub, I washed my feet with hand sanitizer, just in case some germs lingered behind.