sightseeing in Mysore
by mikka
After being drenched by the rains in Kerala, I headed to Mysore in Karnataka State for a few days. Karataka isn't that far from Kerala, but it felt like a completely different country - much less besieged by the monsoon, much, much more crowded. I was a bit overwhelmed the first morning when I wandered outside, but fortunately was immediately adopted by a friendly auto rickshaw driver named Julian, whose photo I unfortunately forgot to take; usually I prefer doing things on my own, but Mysore seemed hectic enough after the lazy Fort Cochin alleyways that I took Julian up on his offer of a city tour.
The first stop was Chamundi Hill, a small hill in the middle of town that has great views of the city and some truly awesome statues.
(I wasn't able to totally escape the monsoon, but it was still nowhere near as torrential as Kerala)
A difficult-to-photograph statue of Nandi the Bull, en route up the hill.
The next morning, I headed out again with Julian to make a longer excursion out of the city. We went to Rangantha Swamy Temple first, where I made the mistake of jumping into the first queue I saw and loosing forty five minutes inside to a jostling crowd of people waiting to pay their respects.
Tiny elephants!
We also saw a lot of places that featured prominently in the life of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, including this surprisingly airly dungeon, where prisoners where kept chained to the walls. Unfortunately, most places had signs prohibiting photography (which went largely disregarded, but I lived in Japan too long to feel comfortable breaking rules!);
A mosque whose name I didn't catch...
The main attraction in Mysore is definitely the Palace of Mysore. Again, no photography was allowed when I visited earlier in the day (though again, I was probably the only tourist complying with this) but the palace was better at night anyway, when the entire thing was lit up for about 15 minutes:
