Mysore: The city of sweets!

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We checked into the Chandra Palace Hotel (not as fancy as it sounds) around 8:00 a.m. on the 8th. Although the room was pretty big and fairly nice, we were informed that whoever had told us the price per night was misinformed, and the already overpriced room was actually more expensive than we'd been told. The staff there was also rather cranky, so we decided to stay one night then move to a much cheaper, though slightly smaller and grungier, place the next day. Unfortunately we realized that Mysore isn't the best place for tourist lodging, in that most hotels are filthy, overpriced, loud, and smell like smoke. We managed fine, though.

After a post-overnight bus nap, we spent our first afternoon in the city touring Mysore's trademark Maharaja's Palace, once home to the 24th Wadiyar raja. The palace was very beautiful with brightly painted ceilings and columns, as well as amazing hand carved wooden doors. However, its upkeep and preservation appeared to be lacking, which was unfortunate considering its intricate craftmanship. We were required to take our shoes off to enter the palace, and, since the floor had obviously not been cleaned in quite awhile (if ever), this was pretty gross. Also, similar to when we visited the museum in Mumbai, all of the Indian tourists were pushing and shoving to get ahead of one another, making the pathway through the palace rather cramped. One interesting thing we noticed (and have continued to notice since) is the way security is handled in India. There were security guards at the palace "checking" people's bags - basically by simply glancing inside them with little to no rummaging around - and there were metal detectors that everyone chose to walk through despite the fact that the guards supposedly operating them were off in the corner smoking cigarettes. The metal detector beeped every five seconds, hopefully from people's jewelry, belts, etc., but the guards paid no mind. You could easily smuggle something inside and no one would even know. On the contrary, when we visited a fancy bookstore in the city, we had to leave our bags at the door, get searched and go through a metal detector that actually had a guard on duty. Apparently shoplifting is a bigger concern in Mysore than someone blowing up the palace. But who am I to judge?

Our second day began with lunch at a great little place we found in KR Circle, one of the main eating/shopping areas in town. A nice British couple sat down at our table (it's pretty common for strangers to share tables in India when a place is busy, and so far it's been a great way for us to meet and talk to people!) so we spent a good hour or so talking to them before going our separate ways. Afterward, we bought some famous Mysore pak from the well known Guru Sweet Shop across the street. This delicious melt-in-your-mouth treat has a similar consistency to sugar cookie dough, and I'm pretty sure its main ingredients are pure butter and sugar... a few bites and you're good to go, but Scott and I overindulged a few times. Then we stopped by the market and bought the tiniest and best bananas I've ever had in my life. Yum!

Our next destination was the government operated Cauvery's Arts and Crafts Emporium. These emporiums are scattered throughout India and sell a variety of the region's handicrafts at a (supposedly) reasonable price. We browsed through the silk products, jewelry, paintings, incense and sandalwood carvings. We wanted to buy a sandalwood sculpture, but they were way too expensive, so we bought two paintings which had been painted on leaves - very cool - some incense and some sandalwood soap. While we were there, we ran into an American man whose daughter graduated from Clemson and talked to him for a bit. Then we went to the bus station and took a public bus to Chamundi Hill, which was probably the scariest bus ride of my life. Apparently it's perfectly fine to speed around blind curves while going up a mountain past other buses that are coming down. Oh, and you can pass cars on curves. In a giant bus. On a mountain. We almost died. Anyways...when we got there, alive, thankfully, we toured the 12th century temple, which was impressive on the outside, but a bit underwhelming overall. There was a shrine inside containing a solid gold statue of a god, but we weren't allowed to get close enough to get a good view of it. The most interesting thing we saw were several extremely fat, presumably pregnant monkeys hanging around the temple. Since it was a hazy day and the view wasn't wonderful, we began our descent via the 1,000 something steps down. (There was no way we were taking another bus!) At the bottom, we looked around for a rickshaw to take back to our hotel. Unsure of how much to pay for one, we approached a police officer who was sitting in his car nearby. He was very friendly and helpful, asked us a lot of questions about ourselves, and ultimately got us what we think was a really good deal for a rickshaw without us having to haggle.

The next day, neither of us were feeling very well and we'd already seen most of the sights, so we decided to have a lazy day relaxing. This consisted of Scott napping while I did all of our laundry in a bucket in the bathroom then hung it to dry on the huge spider web of a clothesline I constructed in our room with some rope we'd brought. Very relaxing. The following day we were off on the night train to Kochi, located south of Mysore in the state of Kerala.

Interesting fact: apparently (and quite unfortunately) we barely missed a harvest festival in Mysore where they paint all the cows yellow and their horns various colors, then make them jump over fire. I was wondering why it looked like someone had taken a highlighter to all the cows...

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Photos

Mysore Palace at Night (we didn't get a picture)
from wikipedia