sunday

I've been wanting to visit Mysore for a while now. Located about three hours out of Bangalore on the freeway, Mysore was the seat of the Kingdom of Mysore ruled by the Wodeyar Dynasty, who were proponents of arts and culture and generally kept things civilized in Karnataka. It's retained a historical and regal ambience that's certanly missing from Bangalore, making it a popular and leafy day out for those sick of autorickshaw traffic and bad air in the capital.

Intro here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysore

Carli, Ella and I awoke early and trekked out to the bus station, taking a windy early morning rickshaw ride. We managed to find our bus after some negotiation and boarded. It was very modern and quite nice, although the standard-issue Bollywood movie blared in the background when all I really wanted to do was sleep. (The ear plugs helped a little, though the child sitting on the row across from me was convicted this was actually the Bus To Hell and screamed straight through the first hour.)

The route certainly was pretty, dipping through rice paddies and rows of waving, lovely palm trees. We'd pass by Punjabi Dhabas, the Indian version of the good ol' fashioned truck stop, full of people chowing down on dosas and endless cups of over-sugared chai. The country gets hilly and rocky outside of Bangalore, and the sheer granite cliffs were a lovely site to see.

We arrived in Mysore and contracted a rickshaw driver to take us around for the day. We immediately drove by the palace, an ornate, shining, prickly sort of building. It was noon and we stopped at a nice hotel for lunch, eating our usual tandoori gobi and roti in airconditioned comfort (although the waiter kept on trying to shut the curtains and plunge us into darkness.)

The driver took us over to the palace. At the entrance, we ran into a pack of Americans - medical students volunteering at a hospital in Bangalore for a bit of a break. They were quite nice - all New Yorkers adapting very well to the bartering culture of India - and we spoke with them for a while.

We eventually wandered in, paying the usual foreigner entry fee of 100 rupees (to the local 10.) The palace was certainly worth it - built in 1912 by an English architect, it was full of ornate metalwork and lovely peacock-adorned stained glass windows - with rows of giant meeting halls and recieving areas and galleries for nothing in particular. Apparently the Maharaja's descendent still lives here (the place is only open on Sunday's), and I imagine it would be very odd indeed to rattle about those marble halls all on your lonesome. (Imagine the long and chilly work to get your cereal in the morning, across mosaic marble floors and under ornate screens. You would feel fragile and terribly human and it would only be 7:30 in the morning, and who needs that?)

We began chatting with a group of Indian guys who were working in Bangalore like we were, although they hailed from all over the country - Jaipur, Delhi, Hyderabad. They worked with Americans and one of them was especially enamored with New Mexico - I certainly understand that. They pointed out various Indian goddesses to us (They all tend to run together), and invited us to join them for the day in their hired jeep. Jeep's certainly beat rickshaws when it comes to convenience, so we paid the rickshaw driver and went off with them.

We went to the Catholic church in the middle of town - not much to look at, beyond incredible and menacing hives of bees hanging off the eaves. We then proceeded to the Charimundi Hills, going up a considerable series of switchbacks to the top. The view was deeply impressive and I took some decent photos, fending off a tribal-attired local child trying to dive into my pictures for a small fee. There's an incredibly enormous racetrack below near the palace....I wonder what it was used for.

We next saw the temple at the top of the hill - reminded me of Hampi architecutre-wise. It was a bit of a tourist zoo with various Hindu adherents sipping coconut milk and patting the baby cows that wandered indiscriminately through the parking lot. We watched the sun go down a little then proceeded to the Nandi (or bull) statue a little below. This was lovely, with a terribly placid expression on its bovine face - nice to sit and contemplate among the greenery and the boulders. But we did have a schedule to stick to. After a brief stop at the inevitable Indian Crafts Emporium, we drove about 30 minutes out of town to a garden area.

We had a train slated for 8:30, but we were having such a pleasant time that we didn't want to rush back. (And miss dinner. The mere idea of missing dinner gives me cold shivers.) The Indian guys conferred with the driver, who agreed to take us all the way back to Bangalore for 1500 rupees - not bad at all. Load off our shoulders, we watched the impressive fountains at the park, Sunday revelers picnicking on the grass and eating bright-red chili fish from the reservoir. (We also posed with an 8 foot tall man standing in the center of the garden, grabbing people with immense hands for five rupee photo ops.)

Ella wanted to see the special Sunday night lighting of the Maharaja's palace, so we drove back quickly, dodging the usual tour buses and bullock carts. Carli managed to cajole the boys into singing Hindi songs - they weren't half bad.

The palace really was lovely lit up at night - every single tiny and intricate point and pillar on the facade decked out in white electric lights, setting up an impressive blaze in the center of town. Seemingly all of Mysore wandered in and out of the grounds, and a band that looked very tiny, sitting all alone in an alcove in the palace facade, played Hindi standards as people took the night air. We popped briefly into the HIndu temple nearby, a grass and incense scented refuge from the craziness outside - (how long did THAT last!)

We had dinner again at the hotel - vegetable jalfreizi, tasty mint flavored tandoori fish, daal makhani (indians inevitably must order it and feel empty without), and some spicy lamb hyderbad curry. And then we jumped in the jeep and drove home - which felt extra luxurious, with no need to jockey for position on the train or bus or avoid flagrant ass grabbery or anything. I slept for most of the three hour drive back, awakening briefly to have a warm and spicy cup of masala chai from a truckstop.

I stumbled back into the house to encounter the new volunteers on the roof - two dread-locked guys from England, listening to Jurassic 5 on the roof. They were drinking a large bottle of Jack and I joined them briefly (never been one to pass up free booze.) I offered them some Old Monk but they took one sip, realized it was in essence rum flavored rubbing alcohol and politely declined. Their loss!