Getting from Goa to Mysore without detouring through Bangalore was something of a challenge. Panaji is on the coastal plain, Mysore up on the Deccan plateau, with the escarpment of the Western Ghats in between. I took a slow, twice-weekly train up to Londa, where I hoped to connect with a slow, once-weekly train to Mysore -- I was wait-listed for the connection. At first I thought that I would not get to ride over the railway bridge between the upper and lower falls at Dudhsagar after all, as I could see the bridge and the falls across a valley. But then the tracks curved round the head of the valley, the train rattled over the bridge, and I watched the water of the lower falls cascading over the rocks below my window.
Londa proved to be a sleepy country station, with a part-time ticket collector who was of no help with my wait-list problem. However, the ticket inspector on the train took a quick look at his seating chart and immediately assigned me a berth. I shared the compartment for most of the trip with a middle-aged couple traveling to see their new grandson. Their son and daughter-in-law had gone to stay with her parents for the birth. They kept me supplied with pineapple juice and magazines during the trip, and when they reached their destination the husband brought his son on board to meet me, with a gift of bananas.
I finally reached Mysore at 10:45 p.m., and was relieved to find that the hotel staff had waited up for me (most hotels in India seem to shut down around 10:00 p.m., and to lock their doors at night). I was staying a few kilometers out of town, at a former palace. The hotel, the Green, claimed to have environmentally sensitive policies, and to give its profits to charity. It was also extremely comfortable, with the cleanest bathroom I had yet encountered in India. Since I spent part of my time feeling that I was finally going to succumb to intestinal problems I appreciated the comfort, and also the hotel’s library. I spent a lowbrow couple of days devouring Clancy’s "Rainbow Six," and warded off disaster with antibiotics.
Mysore is famous for silk and for sandalwood, and there are any number of shops selling souvenirs. I still planned to save my shopping for the last stop, Chennai, to avoid carrying extra luggage, but I did spend some time looking at what Mysore had to offer. It would be a great place to buy a sari (which I feel quite incapable of wearing), and also had beautifully carved gods and goddesses (principally Ganesh, the god of good luck) and intricately inlaid woodwork. But Mysore’s main attraction is not its shops but its palace -- not the country retreat I stayed at, but the massive pile downtown that was built for the Wodeyar dynasty between 1897 and 1912.
I was totally captivated by the palace -- not by its beauty, which is debatable, but by its extravagance. Although its domes were smaller, and its rooms bigger, it reminded me irresistibly of Brighton Pavilion. It had the same swagger, the same opulence, the same amalgam of disparate cultures. Think Islamic arches and Victorian rococo, with Indian overtones. The huge audience hall on the second (UK first) floor -- 155 feet by 42 feet -- had four colonnades of twelve Corinthian columns each -- but the columns were made of four partial columns growing together, supporting florid arches painted a pale pastel green and a ceiling decorated with plump cherubs with Indian faces. There were golden howdahs and thrones, silver and ivory doors, stained glass ceilings and marble floors. The whole massive edifice is lit by an array of light bulbs on Sundays and holidays, but unfortunately I forgot about it on the Sunday and attended a classical music concert at my hotel instead. I was intrigued to discover that although the violin was the featured instrument -- played by father, son and grandson -- it was held upside down. The violinist sat cross-legged on the floor, propping the neck end of the violin on his ankle, and tuning it at the bridge end instead of with the keys.
Although the palace is a must-see, there are plenty of other sights around Mysore. I spent one very long day on a coach tour organized by the Karnataka Tourism Development Corporation -- which would have been shorter without the obligatory visit to a silk "factory" (i.e. shop). The first stop was the Hoysala temple at Somnathpur, an exquisitely decorated building on a star-shaped platform. The last, after dark, was at the Brindavan gardens to admire the illuminated fountains. In between, as we visited the Durga temple on Chamundi hill (incredibly long line to get in), the museum (which appeared to serve as the Wodeyars' attic) and Tipu Sultan’s summer palace at Srirangapatnam I talked with some of the passengers. The only other foreigners were a young Australian man who had been teaching English in Japan, and his Japanese girl friend. A mechanical engineering student from Pune exchanged email addresses with me, as did an interesting couple from Mumbai. They were starting a business based on a scheme to raise organic produce on city trash -- of which India has an amazing quantity.
A former colleague from Chennai had assured me that Southern India was very different from Northern India. And better, of course. It was certainly cleaner. The floors of the temples and palaces, where shoes have to be removed, are immaculate. While piles of trash are still to be seen on the streets in the south, they are much rarer than in the north, and generally confined to the poorer areas. Fewer cows and other animals fertilize the city streets, although there are still men who regard the sidewalks (pavements) as public toilets. These do not seem to be people living on the streets, who have little choice, but well-dressed men who apparently think that turning their backs to the traffic renders them invisible. I joined the Indians in ignoring the sidewalks and walking along the edge of the road. Even when the sidewalks were clean they were given to sudden holes or drop-offs, or to be occupied by cars and bikes. (Again, they were better in the south.) While the roads were dusty, and the traffic only inches away, if that, the surface was smooth.
The temple at Somnathpur had been so beautiful that I was convinced that I should also see the Hoysala temples at Belur and Halebid -- a long day trip by car. It was worth the drive, even though we returned after dark. (In general I tried to avoid long drives in India after dark: bullock carts and bicycles don’t have lights, and lane discipline is no better at night than in the daytime. I had no wish to meet a Tata truck in the middle of the road.) The carving at Belur is quite remarkable, the detail finer than at Khajuraho, and the subjects more varied. Following the instructions in my guide book, I also visited the Jain bastis and the Kedaresvara temple at Halebid, which my driver had never previously visited. Only a kilometer south of the town, these sites could have been miles away, lost in the silent countryside. The touts that infested the main temples were missing, replaced at Kedaresvara by a group of teenaged girls, dancing and singing.
I left the Green Hotel with some regret, carrying a brown paper bag containing the coconut, bananas and betel presented to me after I paid my bill. I was spending the afternoon in Bangalore before catching the night train to Ernakulam (the business section of Kochi). I had abandoned my original plan to spend two nights at the hill station of Ooty (now officially and cumbersomely renamed Udhagamandalam) partly because it would be cold, partly because it involved a long bus trip from Mysore, and partly because I couldn’t count on the mountain railway running, and I had to reach Kochi by December 20th to meet a friend's plane.
Sent from Cary, N.C., USA, Jan. 9 about Mysore, Karnataka, India, Dec. 12 - 18
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