Visit to Mysore - Day 1

So, my mom came over last weekend, and it being a long one (we had monday off due to Ugadi) we (my cousin, his wife, me and my mom) decided to head out to Mysore and check it out. I've been in B'lore for the last 6 months, and one of the first things you're supposed to do is go see Mysore, so following tradition, I did :).

The drive there was pleasant. As usual, getting out of Bangalore was a royal pain in the ass - even though we were driving out on sunday morning. However, once out of Bangalore, the highway to Mysore (aptly named "Mysore Road") was quiet pleasant. It's a 4-lane highway which is better than most roads I have seen in India. It's not broken, nor is it too busy. The only kink in it's armor is that it runs through a bunch of small towns and everytime you get to one of those, your speed reduces significantly. I guess I should complain about why they can't plan these things better, and why they can't have proper entry and exit ramps instead of having sudden turns _ON A HIGHWAY_ but I've learnt that none of that matters now. Good roads should suffice. It took us about 4 hours to get there - we stopped on the way at a Coffee shop to (obviously) grab some caffeine and take a break. It also allowed us to change drivers.

We had booked a hotel in Mysore the night before, so we knew where we had to go. However, for some odd reason, we did not take any directions to that hotel within the city, from the highway. No biggy though - all we did was call up the hotel, ask for some landmark and then ask people along the way for directions to that landmark. I was pretty surprised (and for a long time thought that we still hadn't entered the city) to see that the place was pretty un-cluttered. There weren't too many people, not many cars on the roads, almost no taxis (heaven!!) and the roads were pretty clean and more importantly, not broken every 2 meters. Driving into the city, I got the feel that I was in-fact driving into a hill station. We didn't have too much trouble finding the hotel, one wrong turn along the way is all. The hotel wasn't half bad either. It was a branch of Ginger Hotels and as such was pretty clean, close to international standards and pretty convenient as far as regular amenities go.

So we parked our car, checked in, took a break, and then headed out again for some lunch before going to the Mysore Palace. Lunch was consumed at the Pizza Corner close to the palace following which some window shopping was done. Finally, we headed out again, for the palace.

We parked our car, walked up to the entry and paid our entry fees (oddly, "foreigners" were supposed to pay Rs. 100 for entry whereas "Indians" were to pay Rs. 20. I don't think this kind of discrimination is justified. Even if we assume that somebody can afford to pay the money, doesn't mean we should make them do it. I have not seen such practices anywhere else in the world - definitely not in the western world) and walked in. The first thing that confronted us was the number of guides hawking us for their services. The prices they quoted were too high so we moved on towards the palace thinking that we'll just buy a book and read through it (and indeed we did, later on). We were required to take our shoes off before entering the place (which again was very weird - they're called cleaners - what they do is clean the floors in the evenings - when people are no longer allowed into the place - besides it's not like you're doing such a stellar job anyways keeping the place nice and spotless) which we did - and had to pay for. We then moved into the line to finally enter the place. As soon as we did so, we were again hawked by a guide to give us a tour, and since he quoted a price my cousin was willing to pay (I wasn't too interested in hiring the services of one) we acquiesced and started the grand tour. Going from room to room, he would show us various things, that maybe we wouldn't have noticed, but even so, weren't that significant that we were really losing out on something. For example, he made a big deal of all these paintings done on the walls which were supposed to be 3D. What that meant was that all the eyes (in the paintings) followed us as we moved across the room. Not rocket science - but he made us see the each one of the paintings from various angles repeatedly. Then, once we came into an alleyway where two mirrors were fixed facing each other and he goes "Wave your hand", and we did, which was followed by "see - an infinite number of hands are waving back at you. Isn't that great". I mean seriously - this is something I can replicate in my bathroom - I don't need you to tell me this. Going through that tour, I could kind of relate to a quote I had once I heard in The Wire - "The whole world shines shit and calls it gold".

Anyways, after we had finished our tour of the palace, we walked out, made a quick stop at the souvenir shop for the place, collected our shoes and drove out towards Brindavan gardens. The drive there was decent for the most part - up until the last stretch spanning about 2 kms. The road was broken more than an old woman's face is wrinkled. That shit was so bad that you were basically hopping from one pothole to another, inevitably banging the underneath of your car. And what was even more surprising was that even though the quality of this road was so bad, they still had new and renovated speed breakers - as if any asshole would be driving at the requisite speeds on that road to warrant the creation of a speed breaker. Anyhow, we entered the place, parked our car, hit the head, paid for entry into the park, and strolled in. Now this apparently is the place where a lot of songs in 70's bollywood movies were shot - and once you walk in, you immediately realize that that's true. You have all these small fountains, and then streams of water falling down stepped stones followed by more fountains followed by an even steeper and longer "Waterfall". The whole garden is surrounded by a dam which holds out the river Kaveri, and since my cousin was adamant, we made the hike up the ramp to the top from where we could see a huge well of water on one side, and the dam releasing some of that water on the other.

We then walked back down and went to a Hotel constructed there, where we cooled down (it was a pretty hot day), had some snacks and shakes and generally just relaxed and took in the view for a little bit. Once the evening started to come in, we began to head across the park, where on the exact other side, was a "musical fountain". That hike was torture. There were way too many people, cramped up on a narrow walkway which lead to increasing perspiration, body odor, rubbing against others and an unbearable amount of heat being generated. We finally reached the place, picked out a spot to see the show, went through it (it wasn't too bad, but nothing spectacular either - I couldn't see any co-ordination between the music and the water) and then hiked back to our parking spot. By the time I sat back in, I was dying for a cold one. And, perhaps a smoke. I was burning up, wanted to just jump into a shower, and sit in there for the next two days - just to cool myself down and rid me of all the sweat. Alas, that was not to happen, since it was getting kinda late by the time we got back to the city and hence had to hurry to find something to eat. After some searching, we found a restaurant called Olive Garden (ironically) where we camped up and had our dinner - not the best food I've had, I might add, though what made it better was the surroundings as well as the fact that it was attached to a pretty fly lodge. I had my beer here too - which made things better some.

Finally, at the end of a very long day, we went back to our hotel - and as soon as I entered my room, I just flopped into the bed. My mom took a shower first, after which I took one and then went to bed.

That was the first day of our trip - quiet a long post, but I wanted to list out everything. I will (hopefully) write about our second day soon.

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Edit: The second part of this post is available here.