The plan for the day consists of a trip to Mysore, the next largest city after Bangalore in this state, with Nels, Pavol, and Rob. This began when I woke up at 5:00AM after far too little sleep. We managed to make our 6:30AM train with no major issues (though we did jam 4 people into the back of an auto-rickshaw that should only ever carry 3). Indian train stations are pretty crazy places. There are a *lot* of people, a lot of trash, and a *lot* of pushing when people start to load/unload the trains. Fortunately we took reserved seats in a 2nd class sleeper car (there are something like 5 different possible categories of car to ride) and didn’t have to deal with any of that (we probably wouldn’t have been able to).
The trip to Mysore is about 140km and takes the express train 3 hours. There were no real difficulties with the train, and we took an auto-rickshaw (again with 4 people) from the train station to the Maharaja’s palace. Apparently Mysore used to be the capital of Karnataka, Bangalore is now the capital, so the palace of the ruling Maharaja was is located there. Unfortunately, the original palace burned down in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s and was rebuilt in the early 1900’s. It was a bit of a letdown that the palace was not authentically old, but it was still fantastic to tour through.
As I mentioned, we took an auto-rickshaw to the palace. Once there we actually had to walk around the grounds to a road near the north side in order to find ourselves some breakfast (there was no food served on the train. In fact, I slept most of the way). One of the first things I noticed about Mysore is that there are many more people trying to sell you things on the street and they are much more insistent. We became quite good at saying no by the end of the day.
There were basically no salesmen inside the palace grounds, which was really nice. We wondered around outside for a while, taking pictures, until we discovered some elephants in a distant corner of the grounds! These were black (Indian?) elephants, that I had never seen before. As we were taking some pictures, a man walked up and offered us pictures with the elephants! Nels and Rob were too chicken, but Pavol and I got a few pictures touching the elephants trunk! One thing led to another and we got to get up on its back and take a short ride! (Ha to Elaine! Now I’ve done that too! ^_^). It was really cool and Rob and Nels took a ton of pictures which I will try to get a hold of soon.
After we saw the elephants we went into the palace. We were not allowed to take in cameras or wear shoes, which is pretty standard fare for India. The whole place was spectacular, tons of marble (which seems to be pretty common here), intricate columns, woodwork, and paintings. There were several rooms that were particularly fantastic. There was a massive room that was topped by an octagonal pyramid of stained glass that was absolutely gorgeous, depicting peacocks and some other two-headed bird that looks like a phoenix and I would like to learn more about. There was also another room with a massive stained glass ceiling, in a shape that reminded me of a greenhouse, and doors which were beautiful wood inlaid with unbelievable intricate patterns done in ivory. Finally, there was a massive open “room” that was basically a front porch the size of a football field, but covered and intricately designed everywhere. The palace overall was gorgeous and I think that one of the most interesting things was noticing where European influences were coming out in the artwork (especially in some of the intricate woodwork done on the ceilings).
After the palace we grabbed some lunch and headed up to Chimundi hill. This was a 13km drive out of town, most of which was spent climbing up a massive hill. Once we got to the top we took a while to locate each other (since we had taken two rickshaws that turned out to have dramatically different speeds). We wondered around the top of the hill, took in some *breathtaking* views, looked at the temple there (but didn’t go in. The line was horrific and we weren’t really interested), and popped our head in a free museum that seemed mostly there to tell you what was bad about not being a good Hindu.
Now, the really cool part about the hill is that there is a 1000 step staircase that leads from the base of the hill up to the top. We decided to take the staircase down to the bottom, which was quite a hike! It was worth it though because we got some pretty sweet views on the way down and the trail was nice (if steep). Also, about 1/3 of the way down is a *gigantic* statue of a bull (I think it is supposed to be an incarnation of Shiva) which was neat.
Once we got to the bottom of the hill we decided to walk the rest of the way back to town! It was only 3 or 4 kilometers farther and the walk turned out to be really interesting as we got to see a whole bunch of different levels of Indian life (it really is true that abject poverty exists right next to incredible riches here). Once back in town we grabbed a quick dinner (we were a bit early for dinner still) and caught our train back to Bangalore at 6:00PM. We arrived back here at about 9:00PM, had a heartier dinner of Pizza Hut (which tasted SOOOOO good after a long day of walking, too much sun, and not enough to eat), and as soon as I finish writing this I am going to sleep *extremely* soundly for the rest of the night.
I just have one observation to make about people saying hi & taking pictures. Several time today Indian gentlemen came up to our group and asked for pictures with us. One time, when Pavol and I were waiting for the other two on top of the hill, I guy came up and just asked to take a picture of us! I guess Mysore is enough off the tourist track that white people aren’t so common! It was kind of neat being the object of that attention, especially since people were really friendly about it. Also, when we were coming down the 1000 step path, there were a lot of people that said hello to us. That was very often followed by the question “you from where?” always uttered identically. We never really stopped to chat with people (too much in defensive mode from the aggressive salesmen in the city), but I really wonder if that was people testing out the English they knew on real English speakers (as I have heard happens in China), or if it was something else. Is was interesting that when we mentioned we are from the US (or Pavol mentioned he is from Slovakia) they would immediately name the capital of the country! These were very odd conversations.
Happy Fathers Day Dad!
Cheers,
Jason
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