a unforgetable trip to bangalore and mysore

January 09, 2019

The first day we were brought down to the lovely city of Mysore the third largest city in the state and a very lovely city known for its gardens and palaces. I recall as we drove into the town they were taking us to one of the most famous castles and forts in the area. However instead of actually seeing the interesting parts of Fort Srirangapatna, they sort of took us on a drive through the fort over to a market and a large temple (Ranganatha temple) in the corner. While folks pushed trinkets and horse rides on us we wandered around for 30 minutes (which wasn’t even enough time to see the temple) only to then get back on the bus as they toured us through other things that apparently we didn’t have time for.

What we did have time for however was a long stay at a souvenir and sari shop, which seemed to have nearly no time limit (well officially an hour but it lasted well past that). We ended up sneaking away to see a local garden and mosque and still were back with plenty of time to spare. Sadly we were so nervous of missing the bus that we really didn’t get the chance to actually enjoy being in the town.

I felt a bit Like cattle herded through fences just spending enough time in a spot for light grazing. We sampled a few of the spots and quite a few that I would have cared less to see. We didn’t even get Mysore Pak, which was one of the main reasons I wanted to be there. Mysore Pak is a sweet that is famous from Mysore for those who have never heard of it.

The second day of travel when we were in Bangalore it was about 11am before we even went anywhere. The whole morning wasted picking up people and just sitting around waiting for drivers, buses, chai breaks, whatever. It wasn’t until after noon until we actually went somewhere that was noteworthy and even then we spent so little time I can’t even recall much about the place. One of the summer palaces of the Sultan felt much like a blur, visited at the worst time of the day (for both tourist numbers and photographs).

By about the late afternoon of the second day I was able to finally convince them to ditch the tour and let us go out on our own. We grabbed our tickets and bags post lunch and ran off to see if we could actually go it on our own. It wasn’t as hard as they feared for sure. We ended up checking out the Bangalore palace and a few other random sights around the city. One of my most memorable moments from the trip was visiting the Bangalore Palace even though we didn’t even go inside! We tried to sneak photos in the corner after my cousin failed to successfully negotiate a better deal with the shady museum guard for a better price than the exorbitant price they tried to get out of us. So instead we bagged it to go somewhere else and slowly walked further and further from view to take a few photos to remind ourselves of our tours.

Is it weird that the moments of almost “doing nothing” were more memorable than those of actually seeing “stuff”? I tried to think about that a lot. I recall easily the moments of us running around from place to place, taking the metro, or negotiating with the rickshaws more than the places we supposedly came to see. And I begin to wonder if those are all of a blur because they really were seen that way. We would just be dropped off the bus in various locations for 20-40 minutes at a time, forced to run quickly to take snapshots for documentation and then get bused off to the next “hot spot”. I can barely even separate in my mind the places without really looking back on the photos. Now I did get photos of some really interesting places, but I don’t really have any remarkable moments of those times there however.