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Farm Ox
Does all the real hard manual labour! Saturday 26th April - 5.30am start. Cab is late. No surprise there, it is India after all. It’s off to Mysore this morning for a weekend of sightseeing and elephant and tiger hunting. Tigers are only seen “if you’re very lucky” and I was feeling lucky!
Our first destination, after finding breakfast along the main highway is a small village 50km north of Mysore called Melkote. On the drive to Melkote we are fortunate to finally discover Indian village life - rice and sugar cane plantation fields - beautiful greenery, ox’s hard at work with the farmers and hay drying on the roads. A breath of fresh air.
We made our way up to the Yoganarasimha temple which offered stunning views of he surrounding hills and valleys. Leaving our shoes in the cab and walking about 1km up. The girls weren’t so keen in walking in bare feet - it was kept clean and nothing to worry about! (except the odd bit of goat pooh). Arriving just before 10am, we mingled with the pilgrims waiting for the temple doors to open - our timing was perfect!
Feeling a little uncomfortable about going into the temple
Yoganarasimha temple
50km north of Mysore in a small village called Melkote we hunted around to seek permission. After finding out that all the Indians here were also tourists, we marched straight on in with everyone else. This was my first encounter of being able to stand next to and watch the Hindi’s pray - interesting purely because it was different. We went and watched the monkey’s with lumps on their necks, which I later found out that is where they store their food supply. Also spotted a groovy looking black and orange lizard.
Heading further south towards Mysore, we stopped in Srirangapathnam. Tipu Sultan and his father ruled most of Southern India. In 1799, the British came through and in Tipu’s Summer Palace the history has been documented through large murals on the inside of the palace, so it’s more of a museum. The gardens are immaculately kept, and while taking a leisurely stroll through them I could feel eyes watching me. Next thing I knew a group of Indians (female and male) had approached me wanting their individual photo taken with me - so this is what it feels like to be a cleb aye?! None of the others get this kind of treatment! Ha ha.
Stopping in Mysore for lunch; then heading to Mysore Palace for sightseeing. As we were restricted on time, we decided just to have a look around the outside, as it takes about 2 hours inside. Around the south end of the palace (main entrance) I have never in my life been bombarded with SO many sales men selling shockingly cheap similar souvenirs “NO” and “please leave me alone” doesn’t comprehend one little bit, and it’s not because they don’t speak English - most of them speak very good English. I started playing games, and I managed to bargain a sandalwood fan (government puts a lot of emphasis on sandalwood here) from 200R’s to 20R’s, to then only turn around and tell him I didn’t want it. That annoyed him, as much as he’d annoyed me.
Making our way down the horrendous Ooty highway towards Bundipur and Mudamalai, what should have taken 2 hours took over 3! It didn’t help that we got lost getting to Jungle Home (wildlifesanctuaryindia.com) and ended up in some village 3km away from our accommodation for the night. We slept 5 in one room, which was actually really good bar one - there’s always
Monkey
Food storage in it's glands - I thought it had cancer or something! ha ha going to be ‘that guy.’
Trying to accomplish an early morning safari through the jungle proved more difficult than I had thought - we hung around for about 45 minutes waiting to jump on a big noisy bus to go through the jungle. Let’s say that we saw more elephants, Indian bison (aka Gaur), spotted dear and monkeys in our own cab coming into the jungle the day before. Coming through Bundipur on our way to Jungle Home, which felt a little Jurassic Park like, we came across 2 elephants on the side of the road having dinner. All vehicles drove past at their own risk, very cautiously, but not too slow - really awesome being that close to a wild elephant and not getting stomped on. No tigers this weekend *sigh* next time perhaps.
Back in Mysore on Sunday afternoon I managed to get to the Devaraja Markets - one of India’s most craziest and colourful bazaars. Some of the best fruit and vege - both quality and price - spices, jewellery, oils, incense and kumkum (coloured powder used for Bindi’s and festival decorations). I utilised my bargaining skills I had practiced with my garage
Tipu sultan Summer Palace
Srirangapathnam - 15km north of Mysore. Lots of British history. sale back home in Auckland, NZ. Got myself 2 pineapples for only 10R’s - here in Bangalore city you buy 1 for 18R’s! So after a long hot and tired day we headed back to Bangalore - refreshed and ready for our next holiday in only 3 days time!!
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