The Blog of Gord

Saturday 15 July

This weekend the lead tester on the team organized an outing to Mysore and area. As originally planned, it was to be a two-day trip, and everyone was coming: all twelve people on the team, plus me. Four had to cancel, but we still had a good turnout, with nine of us committed.

The plan was to get an early start, so I was up at 04h15 to get ready, and finish packing. Several people would meet at the office (1 km from the guest house), then I was going to be picked up at 05h30, then we’d pick up the rest of the team who were meeting on the other side of Bangalore. As usual, it didn’t go completely according to schedule. I ended up being picked up about 06h20, partly because of the flexibility of social time here, but also partly because nobody could find the guest house. I was waiting down by the gate, and didn’t have a phone with me, so I couldn’t give directions. I enjoyed a quiet half hour in the front garden with the security guard, who doesn’t speak English.

For nine people, we had booked a “9+1″ vehicle, for nine people plus the driver. What we actually got was a “7+1″ Toyota Qualis, an SUV with two rows of seats behind the driver’s seat, so with nine of us (plus the driver) it was going to be a bit cramped. We stopped at the office, picked up a couple of cases of water bottles, filled up with diesel at a Shell station (at Rs 37.3 per litre, or about C$0.90) and then went to pick up the rest of the team.

With everyone finally collected, we found some breakfast (idli and chai), and were on our way by 08h00.

Even though the vehicle came equipped with a fold-down video screen, we ended up just listening to music all day, a lot of Indian pop music and Bollywood movie themes. We kept flipping between CD’s full of MP3’s, so for a while we’d listen to Hindi music, then Telegu for a while, then Kannada, etc. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to tell the difference, but everyone else sure could. Some of the tunes were quite catchy.

The distance from Bangalore to Mysore is about 140 km, and we made pretty good time, covering that in 2.5 hours including the usual al fresco pit stop by the roadside, and a short stop for snacks in a town. At the snack stop (roti made with dried fruit), we (and lots of other vehicles) were parked illegally on the side of the street. A police van with a loudspeaker informed us of that, driving slowly past telling people to move along (in Hindi, or maybe Kannada, I guess), but nobody paid much attention.

About 15 km out of Mysore, and our initial destination, is an area called Srirangapatnam, which is historically significant as the base from which Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan staged successful battles against the British in the 1700’s. Eventually the British won after killing Tipu Sultan in the fourth battle of Mysore, and were able to take over south India as a result.

Our first stop was the Sriranganathaswamy Vishnu temple, which was inside Tipu Sultan’s fort. The temple was there long before the fort, as it is over 1000 years old, and will be there long after. It’s in great shape, especially considering the wars that have been fought around it. As usual, after running the gauntlet of postcard and bangle salesmen and beggars, we deposited our shoes at the gate (for a rupee or two, someone watches them), and then followed the roped path past the idols and priests. No photography was allowed inside, of course.

Back in the car, we drove past the ruins of Tipu’s winter palace (just a jumble of stones now) and saw the spot where he died in battle with the British, marked with a stone in a small garden. We also drove past his mosque, Jami Masjid, but didn’t go inside.

Our next stop was Tipu Sultan’s summer palace, in Dariya Daulat Bagh. The summer palace has two entrance fees: one for natives (Rs 5) and one for “foreigners” (Rs 100). “Bagh”, as I’m mentioned before, means garden, and the garden is very nicely maintained. It must take a lot of work considering the grass is cut by hand!

The palace itself is a museum now, with artifacts from Tipu Sultan’s life: coins he had minted, paintings, the clothes he wore in the paintings, and murals celebrating (one might say, gloating over) his victories over the British.

Next was a stop at the river bank for a boat ride on the Cauvery river. Actually it’s a raft ride, on a small, flimsy reed raft. All nine of us, and an old fellow with a paddle, squeezed onto the plywood floor that kept us from falling into the river. I learned later that falling into the river wouldn’t have been a good idea: I haven’t been vaccinated for immunity to crocodiles.

After the palace, we stopped at Gumbaz, the mausoleum where Tipu Sultan, his mother, and Hyder Ali are entombed. Shoes off again, we went in to view the caskets. Inside the motif was tiger stripes since Tipu’s nickname at the time was the Tiger of Mysore. Outside, workers were applying fresh whitewash to the towers, perched on rickety bamboo scaffolds.

That was it for Srirangapatnam. We headed into Mysore (about 15 km away) for lunch at the Hotel Siddhartha (that was the Buddha’s name before he became the Buddha, and there are supposed to be a lot of Tibetan exiles living in the area, but there wasn’t a noticable Buddhist theme to the hotel), where we each had a large north Indian thali for Rs 85. The south Indian thali was Rs 10 cheaper… perhaps the extra Rs 10 on the north Indian meal was for the extra spices. North Indian food is hotter than south Indian, if you’re wondering. It was excellent, but my lips were tingling even more than usual afterward. In fact, was hot enough that I drank a glass of water before I realized from the taste that it was probably tap water; the water here is very hard. I’ve been pretty good about drinking bottled water on this trip with only a few exceptions, and then it was (I think) filtered, so my imagination immediately began transforming every digestive gurgle into incipient dysentery.

After lunch we went to see the Maharaja’s Palace (links here and here). Wow! It’s a huge palace set on vast grounds right in the center of Mysore. It was the home of the royal family that ruled much of south India for centuries, except of course for the period when Tipu and his father were in power. The royal family, by the way, now lives in Bangalore in another palace.

Photography inside the palace is prohibited, and there are metal detectors on the way inside, so cameras have to be left outside. Shoes too. For Rs 5, I exchanged my camera (minus memory card) for a safe-deposit box key, and at another counter (nearer the palace) we all deposited our shoes for half a rupee per pair. Then we went for a long barefoot walk through the palace in a long line of tourists. The decorations are lavish, to say the least. The walls are lined with paintings. Many of these are of parade scenes and other state events with large crowds of people, elephants, and horses, but to my surprise, they weren’t just generic crowd scenes, they had legends underneath to indicate who’s who. In one room I had to laugh: a set of thrones were on display, beside which someone had left a plastic lawn chair. I think that was meant as a joke.

After a while, the extreme opulence became monotonous, and I started thinking about what it would be like to live there. I picked out a nice room with golden pillars and a stained-glass ceiling where I’d put my computer desk, and decided my cats would probably enjoy chasing plastic bottle caps on the polished floors, but in the end I decided it would be never-ending job sweeping up dust-bunnies and not worth the trouble.

After the palace itself, there’s a small museum with photos, including very recent ones, of the royal family, and some of their belongings, including quite a few record players, toy cars, and other memorabilia.

After the museum we collected our shoes and cameras and took a stroll around the palace grounds. Altogether we spent 2.5 hours there, and could have spent even more time. Besides the Shweta Varahaswamy temple at the entrance, there are supposed to be a dozen others on the grounds.

We next drove to St. Philomena’s cathedral (links here and here), which is described as one of the biggest in India, though rather modest compared to what you might see back home. Outside were the usual motley crew of limbless beggars and trinket vendors, but across the street while we were waiting for the latest installment of snacks to be purchased, one woman had an act that I hadn’t seen before. She must be made of rubber and have no joints, because she was able to wrap her legs back around herself before crawling away on her hands. I thought to myself, “Did I really see that?”

At this point it was 17h00, and we had a decision to make: do we spend the night in Mysore, or drive home? We’d seen nearly everything we had planned to see, except Brindavan Gardens and Chamundi Hill. There was only enough daylight left for one of them, and Brindavan Garden was one that has to be seen in the evening, so we chose that one and decided not to stay the night.

Chamundi Hill would have been nice to see, because it’s a good hike to the top where there’s supposed to be a nice view of Mysore, at least on clear days. Saturday was overcast though, and humid, so the view might not have been that great, and none of my companions are big hikers. There’s a temple on the hill, and a brightly painted statue of the demon Mahishasura, from which Mysore got its name. The demon looks a bit like one of the Mario Brothers to me. You can see him on the Wikipedia Mysore article.

We drove out to Brindavan Gardens, and had enough light to take some pictures up on the dam across the Cauvery river, and relax for a while on the grass before the Musical Fountain show started at 19h00 when it’s completely dark. Musical fountains seem to be popular here, as there’s one in Bangalore too, but I’d never heard of them before this trip. Each show is fifteen minutes long and the fountain gushes and lights flash to the accompaniment of Bollywood show tunes.

By 20h00, we’d found our driver and the car again (in the dark), and took off in search of dinner. We were hoping to find a dhaba (roadside restaurant) that had beer, but our first attempt ended in failure, so we stopped at a dépanneur in a town called Mondia and picked up a bag of beer and whiskey to take to the next place.

That turned out to be a place with the amusing name “U.S. Highway, Daba” that is a collection of thatched huts with a stone tables, plastic lawn chairs, curtains for walls, with a dirt floor. I had thought the guys on the team were non-drinkers, but most turned out to be fairly experienced elbow-benders. Out of nine of us, only three were non-drinkers.

Mmmm, beer! I had a couple of Kingfisher Premium Strong beers, my first beer in four weeks. Yum!

After dinner and a few beers (or whiskeys) the rest of the trip home was more lively than it had been. I hadn’t had enough beer to induce me to sing, but several of the others certainly had, in several different languages.

We finally got back to Bangalore about 01h00. Back at the guest house, I washed my face, washed my feet (aching from another day of walking barefoot on stone), and collapsed into bed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.