The renowned Karni Mata ‘Rat’ Temple in the countryside near the town of Bikaner is dedicated to the ‘Goddess of Scuttling Things’. But our personal pilgrimage to it was dedicated to another entity entirely - namely, TV’s The Amazing Race. Ever since we watched the barefooted racers brave the dim recesses of an Indian temple seething with rodents, we’ve wanted to see it for ourselves. Now we have, and it was incredible.

Imagine this: it’s dark out here in this tinpot town; the kind of darkness you only get in rural areas. The few lightbulbs dotted about are hardly a match for the heavy blackness of a wintry Indian night. Your shoes are off - this is a place of worship, after all. You enter the temple compound conscious only of this: your every line of sight is filled with a fervent band of scurrying rats. Eddying currents of tiny, dark shapes catch in your peripheral vision, and the air is heavy with the high-pitched twittering that must echo in the nests of rodents. But these rats are not resting: it’s night now, and they are intent on finding food. They have spent all day snuggled deep in the temple’s recesses, and now hunger makes them bold.

The final fact that preys on your mind as you enter is this disturbing thought: ‘if thousands of rats are left to crap and breed in one tiny, confined space, and I then walk through that area barefoot, THIS is what it feels like.’ It’s hard to describe, but the experience of walking across a carpet of rat poos feels squidgy and crunchy and strange all at once. The marble floor is achingly cold, but your feet are picking up a million-squillion tiny shits with every step.

In the temple’s outer courtyard, the first major thing to draw your attention is a huge metal bowl filled with milk that smells sweet-sour in the open air. Rats are swarming towards it, moving like things possessed. When they reach their target, they perch on the bowl’s edge in order to feast on its luscious spoils. The moving brown carpet that this surge of rats creates has to be seen to be believed; it’s hideous and fascinating and incredible.

I’m going to come clean here - these rats well and truly had me in their thrall. I was like an over-zealous parent at a graduation ceremony, hopping and darting and cajoling all in the hopes of getting a precious picture of the little darlings. They utterly charmed me, with their chitter-chatter sounds and their scurrying feet and even their poxy, disease-ridden fur. It was quite bizarre.

Three things are lucky at Karni Mata:

1. You must hope to see a white rat. Of the thousands of rats living here, there are perhaps 11 white ones. We saw a white rat as we entered, and my heart soared! The evening was off to a good start.

2. Rats running over your feet are a very lucky thing. Fantastic - the little buggers were drawn to my feet as if magnetised. I had not yet taken off my socks, and they came running up over my feet, nibbling at the fabric as they went. Sadly, after the socks came off, the rats stayed away - this displeased me.

3. Consuming food that the rats have salivated on is extremely auspicious. Now, I’m sad to report (though my medical insurer will doubtless disagree) that I drew the line at this one. It’s true that in the temple’s inner sanctum, there was indeed a bowl full of food that the rats were munching, but the rat-love that had magnetised me all evening didn’t compel me to try any myself.

Strange, but true.