Mysore

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Yesterday we got a day off from lectures and instead we got to go sightseeing! We woke up early and piled on the bus at 5am to take the ~200km trip to Mysore. In a car or on a motorcycle it probably wouldn't have taken too long, but on a huge trundling bus the trip there took around 3 hours. NOT my favorite way to spend the morning, but I'm pretty flexible about where I can sleep. And, in fact, I would have slept quite well on the bus since I smuggled a hotel pillow out and planned to prop myself up in a corner and snooze and drool until we reached our destination. (Okay, "smuggling" is a bit strong. I kinda just walked out with it...) But, there was something that I did not account for. The roads here have a lot of speed bumps, and they are BIG speedbumps. Add that to the fact that I was sitting in the back of the bus and you get quite a rough ride. The driver was relatively good at slowing down, so on most of the bumps you just felt your stomach and brain lift up but nothing big. One bump, though, left all of us in the back at least a couple inches off of our seats. Better than coffee for waking up, that.

Our first stop was in Mysore, outside of pit stops, was at the royal palace. I learned a lot of history of India on this trip, and much of it from someone other than our tour guide. I spent some time talking to Professor Sriram, who grew up in India, did his undergrad in Thailand, and is now professing in New York. He was a walking fount of knowledge, I tell you. But I digress! In the early days (before Indian independence) India consisted of a collection of states: Karnataka, Kerala, etc. The British didn't rule so much, as just trade with the maharajas and sultans. (Both maharajas and sultans are kings of a certain area, but I think one is muslim and one is hindi. I can't remember exactly. Google it if you're curious. :D ) The British provided the rulers with soldiers to enforce their authority, and in return the maharajas et al over-taxed the people and gave a large portion of that to the British. I'm not sure why, but India was rolling in dough back then, something about the country got them a lot of money. That's also why a lot of Indian artifacts are chillin' over in Britain right now.

So, you may ask, where does Mysore come into all of this? There is a palace there, a huge wonderful palace where the son of the last maharaja of Karnataka now lives. At some point they restructured the government to remove the political power of the maharajas, and so when the last maharaja died in 74 his son did not become the next maharaja, but remained a prince. And since the prince is in his late 50s and has no children it's not looking promising for the royal line. I don't think this prince is complaining, though. The last maharaja agreed to let the public tour a small portion of the palace in exchange for 20%!o(MISSING)f the fees acquired. That's a crap-ton of money, because that placed is jammed with tourists. Apparently the government is refusing to pay his son, though, and there's a case in court to figure out if the prince gets royalties from the tourism. (Ha, royalties, get it? 'Cause he a prince, and all.)

The palace is pretty grand, bigger than the Palacio Real in Madrid but a bit more worn-down. You can't wear your shoes in, so you get to put them into a bucket and prance around barefoot. Well, I pranced. But that's me. The floors were mostly tiled, apparently with tiles from England, with stairs of concrete near the entrance. The ceilings were plastered with colorful designs, and there was some beautiful stained glass from Glasgow. In fact, a lot of the palace features were imported from other countries. It was that fact that prompted me to ask Professor Sriram how these maharajas could afford such glamour, and that was when he started telling me the history of India. My favortie feature of the palace was a courtyard, about 25 yards wide and 35 yards long, near the center of the palace. There was nothing really interesting in the courtyard, no fountains or statues in the center, and we weren't even allowed to go in it as all the entrances were blocked by nets. But I really liked the feel of it. There was a small stair set at one edge of the courtyard, about 6 stairs or so, with statues of snarling leapords on each side facing inwards, and a spiral staircase on another wall up to the second floor. A breeze would occassionally come from the open sky above and ruffle the nets, or my hair as I leaned out the windows that lined the edges and it was really easy to imagine the maharaja standing on the stairs, surrounded by attendants and holding court between those two leapord statues. Also it looked like a great place for a bollywood dance scene. :D

The palace grounds also featured a hindu temple which I got to wander around in. There's a sort of entranceway into the temple where you leave your shoes--you're also supposed to cover your knees and shoulders in deference to the gods. The main temple sat in the center, a building made out of granite pillars with ridiculously ornate carvings at the top. The wooden doors to that temple were shut and locked, so I'm not sure what deity/cod/goddess resided there. There was another building with a pooja room near the back corner, and this one was open and accepting supplicants. You can walk into the small room, stand on a table covered in rangoli-like artwork and the preists (or whatever they're called) will wave some incence in front of the statue and offer you some sacred water to splash on your mouth and head. I did not partake of the ceremony, but we were with Professor Sriram and got to watch what he did. The priests offered a silver platter with a burning lamp on it, he put down some rupees (not sure how much), then they offered him the bowl of sacred water.

Part of the fun of Mysore was what happened outside the palace grounds. I mentioned above that Mysore is a huge tourist attraction. Well, there is nothing foreigners are better at than paying to much for useless junk. So there are all sorts of peddlars right outside Mysore, and they are aggressive. I wasn't interested in buying anything, and I knew the rules: stare straight ahead, ignore them even if they're in your way or your face, and give them no reason to think that you are interested. Don't justify why you aren't going to buy their things. Don't stop, just keep walking. I found their flutterings hilarious and soon enough they left me alone. Some of the other kids, though, showed a bit of interest and were BOMBARDED. Reggie asked a fan-seller how much one cost when going in, and the man even followed him when we were coming out. To get to the bus we had to get through a narrow walk of stalls, and we temporarily lost a lot of kids as we were inundated. After I got on the bus the first time we realized one of the kids from China was missing, and I'd seen him interacting with the sellers before and knew he wouldn't be good at just walking through them and saying no. And if I knew, then the peddlers knew. It's like blood in the water, and you know they'll buy something from you just to get you away. So I left the bus to go escort him back, trying to use my body to get in between him and the peddlars. It was super-fun, like being a body-guard. And even once we were on the bus they didn't stop! They stood outside our windows and waggled their products at us. Sam thought it was ridiculous so she started making faces out the window, much to their amusement. I thought it looked like fun so I joined in, too. Some fan-seller in Mysore has a picture on their phone of Sam with her cheeks puffed out and me cross-eyed.

We ate lunch in the basement club of some fancy hotel, and it was wicked. The entrance to the club looks like a barrel, then you walk into this short tunnel with lit crystal in the floor, and then you get to the club-turned-restaurant. They set up buffet tables on the slightly elevated dance floor, and there were tables and cars around the outside for eating. That's right, they had two cars set up with tables in the club. It was super-fun. The decor was chic-western, with black walls and blue LEDs to simulate the night sky. The food was super-tasty--six types of desserts! Pulab jamoon (I think, I can't remember the exact name) with ice cream, "bread pudding," a fruit-casserole thing, some sort of fruit-pancake-pastry thing, and some tasty cookie-things whose name I can't remember. I didn't keep very good track of what I was eating--I was too busy snarfing it down and wishing I had a faster metabolism. I'm pretty sure I've gained at least 5 pounds on this trip already. Too much eating, not enough unicycling! But I'm not worrying about it since I'm only getting this chance for a limited amount of time. I'm also getting really good at eating with my hand properly--I've realized the trick is to scoop the food up with my four fingers, then slide my thumb from my palm towards my fingertips to flip the food into my mouth. I'm an Indian-food-eating pro, man.

After lunch we moseyed over to sultan Tipu's summer house, also in the Mysore area. The story behind that was interesting; Tipu did not like British sovereignty so he opposed them and fought. It didn't turn out so well for him, though. After winning one bought with the British they came back en force and razed the huge fort that used to be near the palace and killed Tipu. There are some impressive wall paintings in the summer house that depict the battles with the British (before Tipu was killed, I think) and other famous people that I really didn't pay much attention to. After that we hung out on the grounds for awhile, and that was quite peaceful. I met two new Indian guys, Surya and Sasi (whose name means sun and moon, respectively. they should be friends for life.), and chilled with them on the lawn. I think they weren't quite sure what to do with me; even though I ate lunch with them and Kiri and they smiled whenever I wandered around it looked more like one of the nervous smiles I see when people don't know what to expect of you here. I was nice, though, and didn't chatter or anything. Just sat and enjoyed the breeze and the wonderful weather they have in this part of India. Our last stop of the day was a collection of stores on the outskirts of town that were arranged almost like a city square. The complex was absolutely deserted, though, so it was obvious that our tour program had some sort of deal with the owners that they would bring in batches of tourists on a bus. I was a bit bummed; I had hoped for something like the insanity outside of Mysore. Ah, well. Can't win 'em all! After that, we piled back on the bus and made our slow way back to Bangalore. Fun day, in general, but I would have loved to tool around by myself for several days. Maybe I'll tour India on a motorcycle one day. :D

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