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Published: February 14th 2007
New Statue Circle
...and the palace behindAfter Kochi the next place of interest was Mysore - apparently a fave with travellers because of the many palaces and architechtural delights that you don't often find in southern India.
From Kochi the journey was just that bit too far so we made a brief overnight stay in Calicut. Oddly, that night, we were informed by the Indian TV version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", "Crorepati", that the town is named after the material it originally exported - Calico! It's evident that there are more Muslim people in this part of Kerala which I should imagine is partly due to the diaspora of labour migration to the Middle East. As well as a devotion to the Qur'an, there seems to be a plethora of mansions in the palm tree "green belt" surrounding the town, perhaps also due to an influx of wealth from retired and returned economic migrants.
The road to Mysore from Calicut once again twists and turns up into the Western Ghats. We were greeted with the sight of yet more tea plantations (this country produces and drinks a lot of chai), and also more stupendous views. There was a noticiable change in the
All That Colour
Paint powder for sale in Mysore's Devaraja Market folliage as we descended on to the other side of the Ghats. The land plateaued and there were many more deciduous trees than palm trees, when we drove through Wayanad Wildlife Reserve which is home to tigers, elephants and the original Indian peacock. Although road signs warned that we were liable to see the latter two crossing the road, we weren't lucky enough but we did savour the peace of a horn-free stretch of road and vast bamboo forests. As we reached the outskirts of Mysore we noticed a lot of tractors, precariously loaded with sandalwood branches. The town has numerous sandalwood factories that extract the oils from this tree to make soaps, lotions, joss sticks and of course artesans use this wood in their craftwork. You may have smelt sandalwood before, its a really fresh fragrance and thankfully we even caught wafts of the smell as we arrived into town.
We decided to join a cheesy "cram all the sights into one day" tour the next day - cheaper than a autorickshaw but quite hectic. Departing at 8am and returning at 8pm, in the morning we were to taken to the art gallery in Jagan Mohan palace which
houses Haldenkar's beautiful "Glow of Hope" painting and a beautiful French wall clock, to a Government Emporium so we could buy sandalwood items, to Mysore Zoo (yes, our third visit to a zoo in this world trip!) and to Chamundeswari temple on top of Chamundi hill which has great views of Mysore and also a statue of Shiva's bull, Nandi which many people devote their puja to. In the afternoon we were treated to walking around the opulent and occasionally garish, Mysore Maharaja's palace designed by British architect, Henry Irwin for the Wodeyar rulers, several temples on the outskirts that nearly sent me into a coma (they're all starting to look the same) and the slightly bizarre formal gardens at Brindavan, which features a "musical fountain" (no Disneyland's Fantasia). I must say that by the end of the day, T and I were knackered but definitely the most bizarre twist was that stood at the exit to the gardens was an 8' 4" Indian guy who asked for 10 rupees per snap - a kind of one man "freak show" which the Indians were loving. Now of course it's a bit wrong, but as T is normally head and shoulders
The Highly Endangered Gharial
A long-snouted crocodile found in small numbers in India above the rest, he was pleased to be looked down-upon for the first time in his life! The guy gave us both a crushing handshake as we left.
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Kashyap
non-member comment
awesome pics
Probably my first comment is lost. You are an amazing photographer. Usually people like to take pics of filthy places and poverty in India, but your fotos are simply awesome. -KD