Do you know when you arrive somewhere on a train and get a good vibe you like immediately, this for us was Mysore. To get here we had taken the Shadbadti Express from Bangalore - 2nd class aircon chair class – this included lunch and a beautifully upholstered ripped, blue vinyl seat. The Sahdbadti express expressed at an average speed of at least 15mph – the bus may be quicker but this was more fun. Mysore station is a Raj pink confection teeming with Indian life – we have now definitely arrived in the real India – and to celebrate we took an Ambassador car to the hotel – which was bigger and flashier than we expected with a smart, uniformed doorman. However, the interior design taste was questionable – the restaurant is a dark polystyrene cave and the coffee shop is a very realistic plastic jungle complete with plastic birds, snakes and trees – I’m a Celeb meets It ain’t half hot mum meets the Flintstones just about sums it up! This is a pleasant city of wide Raj era boulevards peppered with circuses (roundabouts) all topped with regal statues surmounted with gold in that typical Clapham Common bandstand way.
We feel as if we have really settled in – please look at the pics of us in our new costumes – well, they say travel ages the soul…..
Our overriding memory of Mysore will be buying fragrant oils in the market, climbing up and down a 1200 step hill, and chasing around town desperate for decent coffee and wine like Patsy and Edina on a mission – there is a dearth of both, even the restaurants, despite proffering their wine lists, have no wine (maybe in one week Sir…..). We don’t need French, Indian would be fine, but they don’t have that either. Our other important mission was to pay ahead for our Kerala backwater boat – we had to take a car to the local ICICI Bank and negotiate their paying in procedure, let’s hope we filled in the right bits of paper…
So let’s start with the market – we’ve seen enough markets not to be impressed, but this is billed as something special in India so even we “seen it all types” were impressed. We loved it! It was full of the smell of jasmine, rose and lily, Harrods fragrance hall eat your heart out! All the stalls were making temple offering’s, the fragrance was so powerful we really wanted smelly vision! Of course we wound up buying some fragrant oil after all after being charmed by some stall holders, but that’s part of the fun! Colour was added by the conical mounds of bindi paint in all the colours of the rainbow. Loved it! We were also impressed with ourselves by climbing Chamundi Hill – we are in training for Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka – which is five times bigger than this one so we now realise the size of the challenge… Basically it’s a hill South of Mysore with a big temple on the top with 1200 irregular, rough hewn steep steps. Gill’s quads screamed….. But we did it. We were also a source of amusement for the locals who shared our journey as it was a public holiday. Everyone wanted to know where we from and where we worked. We have invented a game whereby we have to invent a new job every time we are asked. We have been convincing so far…. The steps had bindi marks in dry paint powder and we stumbled across the occasional Sadhu – some holy, some charlatans. The one we met was on the cusp – we traded a photo for a chewing gum, his hair was as tall as he was. At the top we expected to arrive at just a flagpole but no, there was a teeming village, tat market, cows and temples and loads of people (there is a back road for coaches – if only we’d known…) Today’s public holiday meant there were lots of devotees and we loved just chilling out amongst the chaos, wandering aimlessly like the cattle that meandered the temple grounds.
So folks we’re struggling – we both like our food, both like to drink and Mysore remains v. iffy on this front. Ant has some standards, Gill has high standards. Ant has braved some veg thalis in questionable joints for lunch, Gill made do with antiseptic handwash (the only non alcoholic calories Gill gets are through her skin absorbing this….). Alcohol is an even bigger problem - all the bars must have moved to Bangalore, wine has disappeared completely, ice is obviously off the agenda and beer too fattening. You wouldn’t believe the auto rickshaw miles we’ve logged on the hunt for warm gin and tonics – any bottle in a monsoon. We scraped the barrel last night at a rooftop “bar” – we found Shilpa Shettys roof terrace and bar (she of BB fame) - it was actually Shilpa something else but we couldn’t pronounce that – the only wine on offer was Golconda red at 30p a glass – the fact that we left it may tell you how bad it was.
Mysore is famous for Sandalwood and Gill, as an ex Professeurse de Parfums knew all about it. We visited the Sandalwood oil factory and where shown round a dilapidated silent factory by a factory manager. Mysore has run out of Sandalwood – they are awaiting fresh supplies from South Africa…. In the meantime the staff were packing incense sticks, which we definitely were not going to buy – but we both have some in our suitcase together with soap and an expensive teaspoonful of first distillation Sandalwood oil…. Once a shopper always a shopper.
Oh yes – almost forgot the Maharaja’s Mysore Palace – grand, over the top, lit up like Harrod’s at Xmas, frou frou, old things, us with bare feet, lemon coloured. Done. Tick. Next?
