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Published: December 19th 2006
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Tikka Powder
Mountains of colorful powder at the markets. The backwaters experience ended in the main port of Kerala, Fort Cochin, a sleepy and relaxed place consisting of 500 year old Portuguese streets, villa’s, shop fronts mixed together with a few Christian Church’s, Jewish Synagogues and Islamic mosques in addition to the Chinese fishing nets stretching along the forts banks. It was quite a display of intrinsic and diverse cultures, again unexpected, but I have begun only to expect the unexpected. The town was is stark contrast though to the city across the river (lake) less than 1 km away, Ernakulam. The city here is the commercial heart and finds it’s in a boom with shanty back alley shops, bazaars and markets making way for multistory offices, hotels and western style arcades. The visit was only a transitional stop as we had the day to wander around while waiting for the sleeper bus to the next town. And it couldn’t come sooner as it was hard to fill time wandering the streets sucking in the polluted air.
The next destination was Mysore, and with limited hassles booking the 8 hour ride tickets, we boarded the bus soon realizing that the deluxe a/c coach in fact was a bus with
Fresh Flowers
Colorful displays strung together and offered at various temples. windows. Also another important lesson learnt was (and I can not reiterate this enough) do not book the back seats of these buses, ever. Due to the stupid, chaotic driving of bus drivers here, the bus ride was more suited to a roller coaster ride. These guys must get their licenses from a packet of cornflakes. They stop for nothing (expect cows). The back of the bus became a see saw of passengers who are sent flying, I literally left my seat 3-4 times to come crashing down on my arse or legs. All that said though I did have a decent nights sleep, probably because of the sleeping tablets I took during the journey, courtesy of the local pharmacy (you can buy anything over the counter here). All in all the journey wasn’t great but beggars can’t be choosers, especially in India.
Mysore turned out to be a quite little secret, the air was cleaner, most of the town was within walking distance, the people evermore fascinating and not to mention the moderate temperature. The city is known for its silk, sandalwood productions and is home to the Maharaja’s Palace. Upon arriving we wasted on time in heading
Chicken Anyone
This is why you eat alot of vegetrian over here. down to explore the main bazaar and the rest of the city. The Devaraja fruit and vegetable market was a wonderful display of color, smell and local life nestled down tiny back laneways. The colors on display ranged from bright yellows and oranges from different flowers being crafted into displays to be offered to the gods, to fluorescent pinks, greens and blues from the tikka powder being displayed by the local merchants.)
I finally got to explore some architecture here as well, with the Maharajas’s Palace, built in 1912 by Henry Irwin and is an elaborate display of Indian extravagance and plush ness. The building is highly decorated with stain glass windows, mirrors, sophisticated color and detailing down to the fittings and fixtures. Also a highlight was the fact that the building every Sunday is illuminated by thousands of light globes scattered across the façade, around the palace gates and though the temples producing an almighty glow. It turned out that also that night across the road appeared to be some sort of public fair where we found ourselves at a public theme park, something you would expect at Luna Park. Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by fairy floss,
popcorn, carnival games and amusement rides, it was all a little surreal.
The next day we took the local bus to the top of mountain (Chumundi Hill) to the local temple to descend down the 1000 steps to view the bull temple Nandi (Shiva’s bull vehicle) which is a 5m high solid monolithic stone carving from 1659. At this site we were encouraged to make an offering to the gods and I received my first blessing (I think) which involved me with my first red dot to the fore head. I have no idea what it means or anything about it but I was stoked to have my first dot, and I left it at that.
On the way back I also made another visit to the Mysore zoo as it is said to be one of the best in the country and also has 4 White Tigers and 9 Bengal Tigers, so I couldn’t resist a visit. But once again, not to much to shout about. The tigers were all locked in cages measuring 3x3 and asleep in the corner. I guess I’ll have to wait until I’m on some sort of safari before I see a
Maharaja Palace by night
Each light is a single light globe. decent tiger. Although the highlight of the zoo appeared to be me (and Holly the girl there with me) as everyone wanted their photo taken with us, we felt like we were on exhibition or something. Its kind of funny and amusing to start with but it get a bit tiresome by the end of the day…..damn paparazzi.
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