News !!

Finally I have the possibility to give you some news as I found an Internet Cafe here in Bikaner, a city of 800 000 inhabitants in the North-West of Rajasthan, not too far from the Pakistani border. I have some time before going to dinner and then taking the night train to Jaisalmer, even further to the West and closer to the border. Both cities are on the edge of the desert. Bikaner has a very special flair as there are Camels and Camel Charts all over the place, carrying all kind of goods. It has a huge and very beautiful fort/castle built by the local Maharaja in the 16th century. It seems like one in a fairy tale.
My travel experiences are so far very positive: people are extremely friendly and helpful, which is really necessary as most indications are only in hindi and and therefore I need help to get on the right bus, find my way through the labyrinths of the cities, notably the old parts.
I am very surprised how few tourists there are in this area, especially tourists travelling on their own , meaning not with a tour operator or a guide. I have to admit that I had been thinking in some situations how easy it would be just to hire a driver in order to make my life easy, but then, you do not really experience the life of this amazing country.
Today I visited the Rat Temple of Deshnoke, where the local Hindus adore rats (following a legend they are reincarnations of children of the area). There are thousands of rats running around and you have to take off the shoes before entering the temple, tourists and some locals however leave on their socks, which is advisable as the rats leave their excrements a little bot all over.. worshippers bring food for the rat and the people in the temple boil milk for them in huge pots and afterwards you see the rats around the pot drinking milk. Quite amazing actually. The first 10 minutes I was a bit hysteric and each time a rat approached I went away but at some point it is just not possible. And in any case they are very peaceful... after a while I got used to it and some rats even came to sniff my feet !! (I swear that I washed them this morning !!) I even saw the white rat, which , in the local belief, means that I will now be lucky for all my life ! Fortunately I came here !! ;-)
During the last two days I had been visiting the Shekavati-area, which is an area where many merchants lived who built beautiful houses, which have mural paintings everywhere outside and inside. Unfortunately they are quite in a bad state as the merchants went later to Calcota and Bombay because trade was much better there.. most of the owners do not invest anything in them and so they are slowly falling apart. I stayed in an Ecolodge (http://apanidhani.com/), which is a pioneer project here in India. It is not only beautiful but quite impressive what the owner built up in the last 20 years. It was also very sociable as all the guests have dinner together, sitting on a long table. He explained a lot and we had interesting discussions.
In jaipur I went to the cinema together with my very nice rickshaw driver in a nice kitch-like Bollywood film. It was just a great experience !! Another interesting ecperience that I was able to get the LCD of my digital camera (which somehow broke and so I could not take any picture anymore as I do not have a separate viewer) within 24 hours. After having tried 5 or 6 shops, we finally found one, who was able to get it seems the only LCD for my camera model in India (all the others said it would take 3 to 5 days..) delivered from Delhi and built in... This was a big relief as I had already feared that I would not be able to take any reasonable pictures. But in the end I have to admit that the pictures that I took on the afternoon before the camera was repaired (without seing what I was photographing...) were not too bad..;-)
Well, enough for today. I am getting hungry ...
Hope to be able to write soon and then also to have some time to upload pictures...