Mysore pt1

We took a day trip to Mysore. It's about 2.5 - 3 hours from Bangalore. Here is the rough itinerary:
Drive to Mysore
Arrive at Tipu Sultan's palace, pick up guide
Tour nearby fort
Continue to Chamundi Hill
See Temple, Bull, view of Myore
Visit shop
Eat Lunch
Visit Palace
Shop
Drive home to Bangalore
Now, this was a really good day that I will long remember and it may take several posts to get through my thoughts on it. To start with, the road to Mysore was great in and of itself. It was wonderful to see another side of India. We live here as only a slim portion of the population does and our work insulates us from a lot. Taking the drive out of town showed us another, more common slice of life. We saw so many ox carts and cows we stopped counting. We saw cane fields, rice paddies, school children, construction workers, poverty, University kids, wealth, dust and animals; we saw a lot more India. Sometimes they would paint the horns or otherwise decorate some of the wagon-pulling oxen. A few had pom-poms on the tips of theie horns. Again and again we saw people, animals and vehicles with crazy burdens. Cars with a gigantic stack of mattresses towering to the sky and tied with twine. Mopeds laden with a thousand stainless steel pots, tied together like modern art. Women and men with huge parcels balanced on their heads. It was a road full of sights.
And scares. I was up front and had an eyefull of all the near-misses (and hits). If I haven't talked about traffic, it's because I cannot do the sheer insanity of it justice. Picture the worst traffic you have ever been in, with the most aggressive drivers and take away all the rules and that gives you a starting point. It all works, though, unless you are an outsider. We scrapped the paint off of the side of a car on the way back with our rear-view because the other driver was from away. Now, I think our driver wasn't used to a larger vehicle and ground the gears plenty, but he got us through traffic that was giving me a headache and heart attack without even the slightest irritation.

So, we get to the Tipu Sultan's palace and meet our guide. He tells me his name is Banjo. Banjo? I ask. I can tell from his face that that isn't quite right, but he smiles and agrees and from there, he's Banjo to me. Banjo is bright and well-spoken and our ears are accustomed to the accent well enough by now to fill in any gaps. I have to say right now, that he was a good guide: he kept us going, gave us just enough information to keep us interested without being overwhelmed, answered all our questions, and showed us all a good time. He shows us around the Tipu Sultan’s palace and explains how the Tipu was a regent who rose to power in wartime against the British who eventually killed him in battle. Before that Cornwallis forced him to ransom two of his sons. The palace was more of a retreat than anything, but it had a nice grounds and the diorama inside set the stage for the next few steps in our trip. On the way back to the car, a giant parade of schoolchildren on a field trip stream toward us. Feeling rambunctious, we begin to wave and exchange hallos with each of them in turn. The kids wave and greet us right back, laughing all the while. They are arranged youngest to oldest, so the greetings create a delightful age-voice Doppler Effect as the high-pitched hellos turn incrementally deeper as we reach the older children at the end of the line. It’s an amusing all the way around.
In business-y Bangalore, foreigners are relatively commonplace, but out in the countryside we are more of an anomaly than ever and it creates fun situations with the kids all day.Next we drive over into Mysore and up the Chamundi Hill. This was a steady climb up what is pretty much the only hill in an otherwise flat basin. It offers commanding views of the area and the surprisingly large city. Mysore is over a million people and it sprawls around the hill like pooling water after the rains.
And this takes us back to Durga. Chamundi is the local goddess who killed the demon Mahishasura on the hill, giving it its name. It differs depending on who you ask, but Chamundi seems to be another aspect of Kali, Parvati or Durga. She may also be an attendant to Durga. I get the impression that local deities get rolled into others in Hinduism, but I’m hesitant to say that Chamundi and Durga are the same. Still, they are similar and associated.Either way, they are some bad-ass ladies. Remember the other statue of the crazy pirate that I thought was Ravana? Here we go again. We drive up to the top of the hill to visit the temple to Chamundi and this guy was there in the road 20’ tall. The temple area was a delight; full of vendors, monkeys and cows. There was even a spot where a single man could go and declare his desire for marriage. Any woman there that wanted him could take him and they would be wed there in the hall.

More about the temple next post…