Mysore

Bryan finally gets to see his temple... We have come thousands of kilometres all the way to the south of India to see this. Is it going to live up to the expectation?? No Why is that I hear you ask Coz we are at the wrong bloody temple that’s why!!! It’s 1000km to the east!! Not Bryan’s fault though really as it appears there are 2 temples in India with the same name. He was gutted. We have to say that our arrival here was by far the most difficult in terms of finding a room, of anywhere. Considering THERE IS NOTHING HERE!! why is every hotel and guesthouse fully booked? Well it appears there is a big muslim festival on and everyone has come here. The tuk tuk we took from the station was helpful and took us to a few places he knew - one was fully booked again and the other only had one grotty room for one night. So we decamped to an internet place to do an on-line search. No luck there either so back to walking the streets again. We had walked past all the hotels in our budget range and now found ourselves near much more expensive hotels but even they were full. We were starting to get a bit desperate now but eventually we got lucky and found one with a vacancy. Well over our price range but we justified it to ourselves because we had spent the last 5 nights either on a train or in a rock hard bed! Oh and boy was it worth it :-) the bed was so so comfortable we went out like lights. The next day we made all this effort to go to the temple which was 16km out of town. You know the next bit so to spare Bryan’s pain I’ll skip over it! We spent a nice day with a Tuk Tuk driver who showed us the summer palace too, and a sandalwood factory, and plenty of shops. All a bit expensive for us though - especially as we were paying so much for a room. Instead we wandered around the town as Ghandi Square is a bustling thriving market place and interesting to see. They also had lots of shops selling stainless steel kitchen things too, amongst them - tiffin boxes. So we decided, next time we are on a train, we will have our own tiffin box to whip out and share our food. A quick hunt around for the best size and we were done - 2 4-tier tiffin boxes of our own - what a souvenir! That night we were pretty tired so Bryan went out and bought a buffet back to the room with him. Also as we were paying so much for the room we didn’t really want to leave it! We had a feast of onion bahjis & paneer pakora. yum yum The following day we had to check out at 12 noon. So after breakfast we decided we were just going to sit in our room til 12 and get maximum room for money value! We actually checked out at 11:59:49. Can’t get much better than that! We left our bags with them and decided that as our train wasn’t until 6.30pm we were going to see Mysore Palace. Apparently it’s pretty famous here but we had never heard of it. It was more or less opposite our hotel but the entrance was on the other side so we decided to take a horse cart. We had to wrangle with ourselves first though as we had heard stories about the horses being neglected. The wrangle we had was if we don’t use them, then the men stay poor and have less money to feed the horses. But if we do use them are we just encouraging bad ways? In the end we decided as always to have a look at what was going on first. When we got to where they were waiting, every single horse was munching through a pile of long grass placed on the floor for them. And the blacksmith was doing his rounds fitting shoes to them where they stood. The horses all looked in lovely condition - except one that looked a bit thin, so we took one to the palace entrance. We have seen so many palaces on this trip that we really struggle to find much enthusiasm for any more especially when you have to take your shoes off and walk barefoot around these places. But it was very pretty inside and quite different from the palaces in the north of India. Then, most importantly, we found a restaurant so we could fill our tiffin dishes. Later we caught the train - we had a compartment with just us and a lovely lady named Camella. A retired College Principal on her way back to Bangalore to do some more work for the college. She was so interesting to talk to that time went so fast and we were in Bangalore before we knew it. Such a shame as we didn’t get time to whip out our tiffin and share our food with her! President Hotel Room rating: 9/10 - the bed was wonderful & we had a clean bath Location: 7/10 - walking distance from anywhere Staff: 7/10 - Always trying to help Value for Money: 4/10 - most expensive yet 2300rp a night (£30) Other comments: had to change rooms as no hot water in the first one Stay again? if not on a backpackers budget - yes Overall area experience: 6/10 - we won’t forget this place - or this temple - will we Bryan???