Every morning recently I have been having milk and cookies for breakfast. My brother Gopal has a surplus of milk at the moment and he calls every morning to make sure I come down to drink my portion. Today instead he arrived here with the milkman in tow. The milkman wears a wonderful technocolour turban and carries a tin milk can. Gopal has a plate of food.

“Today is a special Mata ji (Mother Goddess) festival,” he says. “Eating special food. Nothing hot.”

I take the tali from him, on it is an assortment of snacks and sweets, some pickle, some dried vegetable and a sweet porridge dish.Ok so what story is behind this festival I ask he heats the milk and the milkman lights a beedi. He prevaricates a little, today is some kind of woman’s festival and so no cooking. “Yes but there must be a story behind it,” I insist.

“Arre yaar, it’s a very old tradition taken from when people were very less educated.” He explains. “The educated people who knew the science of health and longevity knew that people should adjust their diet at the change of every season. Instead of telling people this is good for you, they made up a story and made this festival so that people would change their eating.”

The food on the plate is all the Ayurvedic balance of cooling food. The porridge is cooling and so is the cumin used to flavour it. Sugar, jaggery, all the local ingredients that are both cooling and non aggravating to the digestion. There is a lot of chewing involved and as with every festival involving food in India, people have been arriving all day with plates and piles of similar food. It’s a wonderful interplay of storytelling, food  and science! Food as medicine and medicine as food as well as a day off for the cook!

First catch your camel. Then let the camel man arrange all, negotiate the price,the food, the place and wobble off on balloon wheel camel carts.

Stars and flashes of lightening compete across the night sky. Darkness falls and camels stumble, in the distance and closer with every step a secret passage into an Aravalli Temple. The stairs are visible in the dark.

The storm provides lighting and entertainment, birds wake us in the dawn and the sun warms our backs as we ride.

Think you might have rats in the basement?  If you lived in Deshnok, Rajasthan you might consider that a lucky sight.

Many years ago, or so the story goes, the goddess Durga incarnated in the 14th century as Karni Mata, a mystic. Karni Mata devoted her life to the poor and oppressed. When her younger son drowned she appealed to the Lord of Death to restore him to life. But you can’t argue with the Lord of Death and Yama was unable to restore her son to life.

Karni Mata did it herself and announced that henceforth her family members would never die but be restored to life each time as a rat. She is said to have laid to cornerstone for this temple which dates back to the 15th Century.

To see a white rat amongst the teeming skidding sleeping scattering moving carpet of rats is considered to be very auspicious so I went there specifically to get advice on a story I am planning to write. If I don’t see the white rat, then its a sign to abandon the project and if I do see the white rat then its a sign from the Goddess Karni Mata! I had to go twice, the last time was a bitterly cold winter day. Rajasthan may be known for its heat but winter can chill to the bone.

As is usual and correct for all seekers, it wasn’t until my frost bitten toes were literally sticking to the ratshit carpeted marble floors and my suffering was complete that I got my first sight of the white rat!