La Gringa y Su Esposo: Mysore

$1.50 thali meals - delicious!

February 12, 2019

We traveled to Mysore by train, heading back to Hubli before catching an overnight 13 hour train into Mysore. We sprang for the 2AC cabin, the business class equivalent, for the longer leg, with two beds to a side for four beds per small cabin in a nominally air-conditioned car. It’s actually quite pleasant. Chai vendors are everywhere in India, even on moving trains, as evidenced by the dude who strolled through our car carrying an insulated dispenser. Yes please! We’re going to miss chai. We slept for most of the night with the blanket and sheets provided by the railway (nominally clean, best not to dwell on it), arriving in Mysore at 6 am. We paid a bit extra for an early check-in and room upgrade, cleaned up, then wandered into town.

We spent the first day getting our bearings, running errands and stopping by the bus station to see about getting onward tickets. Tim had his pants hemmed by a local tailor for $0.45, we replenished cash, picked up water and snacks, we went shopping for local clothes for Mariel at a women’s bazaar.

We read online that Mysore Palace lights up every Sunday evening from 7:00-7:30 pm and it was conveniently Sunday, so after dinner we walked over to the palace and into a festival atmosphere. People everywhere. Mysore, a city of 1M people, is the seat of the Wodiyar dynasty, founded as a subsidary kingdom of the Vijayanagara empire that was based in present-day Hampi. Being farther south, Mysore never suffered defeat and the royal family continues to live in Mysore palace to this day. The palace and the surrounding walls and temples are covered in more than 100,000 old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, providing a beautiful Disney-esque sight when they’re all lit up. There were thousands of locals and tourists milling about, sitting on the lawns, taking pictures and having a good time. A live band played instrumental Indian music. Thunder and lightning flashed in the background as a storm (a real storm!) approached, with the first drops hitting a few minutes before the lights were scheduled to shut off and the crowd pushed towards the exit in a surprisingly orderly fashion as the rain began to fall. We passed a random brushfire just off the sidewalk as we walked back to the hotel, figuring that it was safe to ignore with the oncoming rain. Haven’t seen any untoward news stories, so probably a safe assumption.

The next day we took it easy as Tim was slowly recovering from some raw vegetables he had bravely (...we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that) eaten in Hampi. We did some yoga, walked to lunch, and otherwise relaxed. Our hotel was excellent, especially given that it cost $30/day. One past reviewer nailed it: “Nice, but charmless. It’s a fine hotel, and would be considered so anywhere in the world”. We ended our stay in Mysore by touring the palace during the day, wandering through another large bazaar, and then getting dinner at Double Barrel, a Texas-themed brewpub. The beer was actually really well-made, although the Hop Bomb was more of a mild pale ale, which didn’t stop some of the locals from complaining about bitter beer in online reviews. The next morning we packed up and headed to the local bus station to catch our ride to Wyanad.