An attractive package to the city below? Visit Genius.Travel
Karni Mata Temple
About 30 kilometre from the city of Bikaner is this famous Hindu temple. It is dedicated to Karni Mata, an incarnation of the goddess Durga. People from all over the country come to the temple to honour its inhabitants: roughly twenty thousand holy rats. The rats are crawling all over the marble floors. You enter barefoot and it’s considered to be very auspicious for a rat to run over your feet. The legend goes that Karni Mata asked Yama, the god of death, to revive her stepson, who had drowned. When Yama refused, Karni Mata decided that all of her male children would reincarnate as kabas (rats), who would then reincarnate as her family members. Between the thousands of black rats there are a few white ones. If you see one, it means good fortune. Mind your step, because if you step on a rat and it dies, it means eternal bad karma. The only way to avoid that is to replace the kaba with a rat made of gold.
Address: Deshnok, Karni Mata Temple Road, Bikaner, Rajasthan 334801
