Holy Rats! Photo | TrekEarth

Photographer’s Note

Karni Mata Temple, Rajasthan, India

This temple is NOT for the faint of heart! According to the legend, Karni Mata, an incarnation of Durga, asked Yama, the God of Death, to restore the life of the son of a storyteller. Yama refused and Karni Mata reincarnated all dead story tellers into rats, taking away souls for Yama.

Author's note: ...

I don't mean this as a critique, more as an observation, but this is really where I understood that Hinduism is really a surviving mythology. Pretty much the same way ancient Greece explained the world. Gods are almighty, they live in the world of the Gods, and they sometimes bless the human world with an apparition.

Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews, on the other hand, all believe in human incarnation of a single God through prophets and miracles. An Hindu God can accomplish miracles ten times more powerful with a click of a finger! Forget walking on water, he will lift a mountain and dig an infinite hole underneath if he has to!

But back to the temple!

This temple is unique in the sense that it is literally INFESTED with rats. I have never seen so many rats in my life. Like in any Hindu temple, take off your shoes before you walk in, and hope for a rat to actually walk on your feet... it is apparently good luck!

MeAT :)

From my travelogue: India Revealed

Wandering_Dan, DannyJ has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

sevy (13954) 2008-03-21 7:13

Hello Mathieu,

Very surprizing photo. It is the first time I saw that. The global colors are brown, but it is nicely broken by the milk plate providing a white circle.
I knows some friends of mine who would have never entered in this temple.

Yves.

imtiyaz (997) 2008-03-21 21:03

Hello Mathiey,

Fantastic capture
And informative note.
Mixing of brown and white colors looks so good.
TFS,
Regards,
Imtiyaz.m.s

Wandering_Dan (3293) 2008-03-22 11:48

Hi, Mathieu -

Better you than me! We had heard about this temple in making our plans for Rajasthan last year, but gave it a pass. Good composition, though, and a good observation of a touchy subject.

I think the Hindu pantheon is more complex than the Greek, by the way; from my limited knowledge I have the sense that the various gods are really different aspect of a One God.

Regards,
Dan