Mysore

The town of Mysore is about a 3-hour car ride from Bangalore which is the city with the closest airport, and also our port city to leave India. The car ride from the airport to Mysore was not as bad as all the other rides because once we were out of the city, the new highway is actually a divided highway with two lanes in each direction. I didn’t think this was possible. This however didn’t stop all the honking, as I found out that it’s a law that you honk your horn when you pass someone. Plus they don’t have drive on the right; pass on the left or any kind or organization like that. And you still need to deal with everything including carts being pulled by ox.

When you pass through the small towns, in the states we always lower the speed limit on the highways to something like 30 while you drive through town and then pick speed back up. Even though they have limits posted on the road I’m not sure the people know what those mean, so slowing down to go through a village is not something they would normally do. The way they get the cars to slow down is they put up barricades in the road. They use three barricades, two placed in one lane, and one in the other lane between the other two so it forces all the traffic down to one lane and you must zigzag through the barricades. They put these up right before the crosswalks, usually only one per village. Crosswalks by the way are called Zebra’s because of the white strips. They also like to use speed bumps, and these speed bumps are more like mountains than bumps and if you hit one very fast, not only would your car or rickshaw be wiped out completely, it could kill you, as we read in the paper about a guy on a motor bike that hit a speed bump going to fast!

Mysore is considered the birthplace of Ashtanga Yoga, the place where Sri K. Pattabhi Jois started his studio. He is the one that taught our teacher, Lino Miele. The town itself has about 80,000 people and is growing fast as people are moving there to get away from the city of Bangalore. There is not much to do in Mysore; it’s not really a place you would visit as a tourist unless you were there for yoga or passing through. We had a teacher named Ajay (AH-jay) while we were in Mysore who I felt was an incredible teacher and I would like to come back to Mysore and study with him over going to Kovalam with Lino. Both are great teachers, but Ajay I felt had a better connection to his students. In support for Lino however, Ajay had 24 students, Lino, 150. Lino has been doing this for almost 2 decades, where Ajay only several years, however I can say that he will go far.

We did travel to several temples while in Mysore, including one on tip of Chamundi Hill, which is one of the 8 sacred hills in India. On the way up the hill they have large signs that say “No plastic Zone” meaning they are trying to reduce the amount of trash being thrown around on the hill. Indians don’t understand the concept of trash cans – partly because disposable products/packaging is relatively new to them, and they don’t have the money to pay for someone to go around and empty the garbage cans. When we got to the top of the hill, almost ALL the vendors that were there selling product were selling at least one type of plastic toy! Some vendors that is all they had was plastic! Of course not only was the item plastic, but of course it came in a plastic bag of some kind as well.
The market was another place we went to while in Mysore. This would be similar to what we would call a farmers market, only this place went on for blocks and was the main course of food for the entire city, weather for families, restaurants or hotels. It was truly something to see. All the fruit and vegetables all of course in season and nothing is out of season. They don’t ship fruits and veggies around the country like we do. You eat what is grown locally or you don’t eat it! Flowers are very big here, and not for vases in your living room, but flower necklaces and the likes for the temple gods. The flowers at the market were incredible, and since they string them, they don’t have stems, so there would be piles of just flowers. They use a lot of Marigolds and I seen 50-gallon burlap bags full of just marigold flowers. Jasmine was the only other flower that I could name, but the displays were incredible.

The main tourist attraction for Mysore is the Mysore Palace, which is actually famous, and often it is pictured books about India. The Palace was built for the Maharajh of Mysore back at the turn of the century. (I guess now we need to be more specific about which century. The 19th century.) The building is huge, and does fit in with what we would consider a palace. It’s a cross of Indian and English architecture, and sits on about 40 acres. On the grounds are three Hindu Temples, which we visited and they still have elephants and camels on the grounds for festivals. I have some great pictures of the grounds and outside of the Palace, but of course no cameras allowed inside the palace or temples, sorry!

The Palace, on Sunday evenings for one-hour only turn on lights, which outline the palace, three main gates, and temples. This is the type of picture one would usually find of the palace in books. Think Christmas lights, or Main Street USA at a Disney park, but about 10 fold. Not really sure how many lights they use, but it is completely breath taking to see it all lit up. It brings thousands to the palace every Sunday night. Families come and just sit on the ground, no grass, just dirt, and look at the lights for the one-hour they are turned on. To get onto the grounds you need to go through a metal detector, and they have only one at each of the three gates. That means three detectors for thousands of people! Lets just say it takes awhile to get in.

We are in India, so get this. There is a local village near by, who for whatever reason they were chosen, lose their power for one hour, every Sunday night while the palace lights are on! There is not enough power to go around as it is, so that is the reason they only turn the lights on once a week for an hour, so these small villages nearby don’t lose theirs. Those of you who live in Salt Lake, imagine loosing your power once per week so that Temple Square could light up! That is just what they do.

We board a train tomorrow back to Bangalore for a day and a half before returning home. I might blog about the train ride, we shall see what its like. We do have first class tickets because that way we actually have a seat assignment, and the coach is air-conditioned. The tickets were only 600 Rupees each ($15 US). The train ride will be 3 hours just like the car but hoping the trip will be less stressful, and quite. Lets cross our fingers!