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Published: March 17th 2009
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A bit overwhelmed
A HUGE and delicious south indian meal. Yum, yum. We liked Mysore, we really did. It's just unfortunate, the events that transpired during our visit.
First and formost, we took a night train from Hampi to Bangalore. It was a most pleasant ride and seemed to pass in a jiffy. Lovely. Though, obviously, it wasn't a very deep or restful sleep.
When we arrived in Bangalore at 6am we were a bit tired, but needed to find a bus to get to Mysore, since we weren't planning on sticking around. It wasn't hard to find a bus, almost every bus in the lot seemed to be going to Mysore. The ride took longer than expected (around four hours) when we thought it would be two hours, so we were more than ready to get off.
We had a hotel in mind when we arrived in town, as always from the Lonely Planet, but somehow managed to let ourselves get scooped up by one of these sneaky hotel touts who can see that you are on your last brain cell after a nights travel. They simply approach, ask where you are going, we tell them where we are going, and they suggest another place.
Usually we dont fall for it,
but that time, we did. We decided to just look and see at the hotel that he offered us. Why Not? Hmmm...good question.
The deal with these guys who scoop us up from bus/train stations is that they get a cut of our payment from the hotel management for bringing us to their doorstep.
We didnt know that were was a good reason that the hotel NEEDED slimy guys like that bring them business.
We were tired but carried on the day as usual, finding good restos (REALLY good restos), checking out the market (where they are famous for hand-making sandalwood incense...mmmmmmm!) and such.
It was a really nice day. And Mysore seemed really cool. Lots of cool shops and good snacks for sale on the street sides, an amazing palace that we planned to visit the next day (and ended up touring around on a horse-drawn cart at night) and just a sort of nice atmosphere, dare I say it was sort of, in a small way...quaint?
Anyhow, after our day of walking around, put ontop of our previous night spent on the train, we were quite tired indeed.
I was sleeping quite hard and getting some
Sportin' the horse carrige
We rode up to the palace in style. wicked Zzzz's when all of a sudden, in the middle of the night (4am to be precise)...I was woken up by Guillaume bouncing up, flicking on the lights and screaming
"I KNEW IT!!!!!"
Of course, he knew it..but I had NO IDEA what he was talking about.
So, I turned over threw on my glasses and soon realized what he was screaming about.
To put it lightly, a complete and total INFESTATION, no no no...TAKE OVER of BED BUGS!
Our room was being totally taken over by bed bugs. It was truly the worst we'd ever seen (and we've been to Kuala Lumpur, keep in mind).
I have to say that in this situation my sympathy goes out to Guillaume because he is the one who suffers the most. They really seem to be drawn to him and feast upon his succulent blood, while I get to sleep soundly next to him, not being bothered at all.
Needless to say, we had to get out of there pronto. Since the infestation was so severe, we had to shake out everything that we owned before throwing it back in our backpacks and running out of the place. We
The night after
Jasmine wanted to catch the vibe of US after the night of the infestation. Well done. left in such a hurry that I actually left a few things behind that I didn't mean to leave. Damn.
By the time we argued with the hotel manager for him to give us our deposit back (aside from paying for the night, damn he was a stingy bugger), politely exclaimed to him that he was CRAZY for thinking that we wanted to go to his other hotel down the road, and checking out of there...it was 5am already.
So, the time was right to check into another hotel, infact we went the hotel that we wanted to go to in the first place!
It was a gorgeous place, really, and we were so thrilled to arrive. The building looks like it got stuck in the 30's, with gorgeous wooden furniture around and signs on the walls of the rooms requesting to not bring any "non-veg" foods on the premises.
Jasmine and Guillaume somehow fell back asleep after settling in, but there was no way that I would be able to do the same. So, I just waited for them to be finished resting, while I sat up, tried to read and scratched my body in an incredibly
New pad
We love, love LOVED our new room at the Dasaprakash hotel. Oh so, classy. paranoid fashion for a few hours.
Yes, the next day, we were quite lacking sleep, again. We knew that it wasn't going to be a very productive day. So we went to the market, bought some fantastically delicious red bananas and wandered around.
Jasmine and I decided to catch a local movie at the theatre during the afternoon. It was quite entertaining at first, once Jasmine and I somehow ignored the gang of immature men who decided to bombard us with hoots and hollers. But after two hours we were so bored with the movie. It was actually a quite blatant rip off of the genius movie Tsotsi, with too many song and dance intervals. We were so happy when Guillaume snuk into the theatre to come and rescue us from it.
We visited the palace, exterior only (since the inerior entry fee was a whole $5), and were amazed at its beauty. There is still a living quarter where the king/mayor/governor (?) lives to this day.
And, finally, finished off our visit to Mysore appropriately with another DIVINE meal at a southern meals joint. It was fantastically delicious and rounded off with the tooth-achingly sweet, and
Was it our lack of sleep?
Or is this just a confusing sign? locally famous dessert Mysore Pak. Something like the interior of a Crunchie chocolate bar. Yum.
We slept GOOD, so good, that night. Without a sight of a little bed buggie. We were so relieved, couldn't have been happier, really.
And we set off the next morning for Bylakuppe, a fascinating little settlement of Tibetans in the south of India (?). I know, wonderfully fascinating.
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