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Published: February 12th 2010
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Me and Rob both woke up feeling fed up this morning, due to a mixture of things...
1. the manicness of the towns
2. the harassment
3. the consistent beeping and crazy traffic
4. the every man for himself attitude we're often encountering- pushiness, rudeness, being barged out of the way
5. the fact you get nowt for nowt here even 'friendly' advice, need to be on your guard all the time
Anyhoo as today was our only day of sightseeing in Mysore we forced ourselves up and prepared to face the day. First thing we did was book a bus to Hampi, we were supposed to be staying another night in Mysore but decided it would be better to take a night bus than a day one especially without a/c and we had to be out of our hotel room by 8am and we didn't fancy a whole day trying to entertain ourselves with our houses on our backs.
Flogged rickshaw to palace and he was the first person of the day to try and rip us off, we called him on it though and got a more reasonable price. At the palace numerous people harassed us to
buy sunglasses, postcards, jewellery boxes and other crap we didn't want, some of them following us down the path and getting in our faces. Palace itself was very ornate and quite impressive inside and out though photos of inside were prohibited 😞 Oh yeah we had to pay 200Rs to go in whilst Indian's pay 20Rs which we thought was a bit unfair. I then paid 5Rs to go in a disgusting, flooded squat toilet.
We then got a bus to the temple on Chamundi Hill which was easy enough and only cost 15Rs each. A couple of guys were collecting your shoes before you went into temple. We were then harassed by more touts inc. one wanting us to exchange some english coins he'd somehow got a hold of. At temple entrance some guy tried to hand me some flowers, I said no but he replied they're for the temple not you so I thought maybe I was being rude declining so I accepted them and so did Rob. Then as if from nowhere some random guy appeared and started telling us where you went to get blessed etc, the temple was teeny tiny and needed no commentary.
He rushed us round and we couldn't understand half of what he said though he managed to make it clear we had to pay a 10Rs 'donation' for each blessing we received and wewere railroaded into getting them. Then at the exit he turned round and demanded 200Rs. We argued with him as he was totally out of line and this continued whilst we went to get our shoes back (more money to pay out, wished we'd just carried them).
So now we had the scam artist 'guide', the english money tout AND a man trying to sell us postcards all following/harassing us! In the end we gave temple rip off merchant 100Rs to bugger off and told the other two to go away.
Got on bus to leave and some cheesy, sleazy guy started telling me how good my blessings looked and how I was beautiful and blah blah, yes with Rob sat right next to me. I just leaned on Rob and he left me alone. Had headache by this point and Rob was on his last nerve so we got some grub and holed up in the hotel for an hr before going to bus
station.
Had an interesting experience at bus station loos. After again paying 5Rs to pee in a grotty hole I, for the first time saw women peeing in squat urinals (they're free) needless to say I bucked the trend and stuck to a cubicle. A nice guy (for seemingly no other reason than to be kind, they do exist it seems) at the bus stop helped us find our bus stand and a seat and even introduced us to a Slovakian couple who were also getting on our bus. Bus was crazy mental. It was a government very basic bus (no reclining seats here!) and had lots of locals on. It was totally rammed too and a group of drunk guys got on and poor Rob had them leaning all over him.
To sum up the bus ride.....
bump, bump, shudder, rattle, thirsty, pot hole, speed bump, projected from seat, toilet stop (minus toilet), lights on, drop some people off in random middle of nowhere town, lights off, big bump....and loop for 10hrs.
I was immensely grateful for my ipod (thanks grannie 😊)
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