The Laxmi Niwas Hotel or Llanagarh Palace is a large pink sandstone building once owned by the Maharaja Ganga Singh and has entertained Royals such as Queen Victoria.   The Mararaja was said to be a modernist and the only non white member of the British Imperial War cabinet in WW1 even though he had about 59 concubines who were housed upstairs. If you notice in the picture there are no visible windows, just mosaic openings as women were not allowed to be seen but they could look through the openings. It would be interesting to know what Queen Victoria though of that! The hotel has a very eerie trophy room. All the animals skins in the room, tigers, lions and antelope were shot within Rajasthan.

Lovely evening meal in the inner courtyard as musicians and dancers played. 

A very interesting day. We were met by our guide Mohammed Javed, who we found out was in England for some time playing cricket for Yorkshire and Surrey. Bikaner's population is about 1 million. There are 40,000 Tuk-tuks, 250,000 motorbikes as well as cars, cows and dogs. Our first visit was to Bhandasar Temple, a Jain Temple. Jains reject the caste system, are strict vegetarians, cover their mouths so as not to breathe in insects and brush paths to prevent them stepping on living creatures. It was a vibrantly painted temple with a newly renovated gold leaf altar.  Our second visit was to the Rat Temple. Rats are supposedly the spirits of the dead. Outside there were stalls to buy food for them and inside there were thousands of rats running around with some drinking from a container of milk. We had to take off our shoes but at least we were given flip flops to wear! Our last visit was to the Junagarh Fort. Another lovely building full of precious antiques with large numbers of emeralds, rubies and diamonds laid into fabric of the building. Doors and thrones were made from solid silver. Built by Raj Rai Singh whose descendant, Ganga Singh built a new palace in 1902, now the Laxmi Niwas Hotel.

Javed asked if we would like to go to an emporium selling locally made textiles. Some fantastic items. I now know there are four types of wool - camel hair, used for carpets, camel wool from the shawn necks of camels (to stop them getting too hot in summer , goats hair or pashmina(cashmere) and shatoosh, the finest wool,  which is wool collected from antelopes when they scrape their wool on thorny bushes after coming off the mountains in summer.  The scarves woven from these wools were incredible and intricate.  I was not going to buy anything but temptation took the better of me and an hour later and a few Rupees lighter we emerged from the Shah Emporium having bought a hanging made from antique gold and silverwork. 

We then went to see a speciality of the area -  miniature painting. Shiv Swami holds the Guiness world record for the world's smallest painting. This technique had been in the family for generations and the detail could only really be appreciated under a magnifying glass. He uses brushes consisting of five or six hairs and paint made from minerals such as indigo, ochre, leaves and mosses. He demonstrated using my nail and painted a landscape with birds, a temple and flowers along with "Maggie in India". Needless to say we had to buy one of his more modern pieces.