Mysuru

Date arrived: 24th January  2024

Date Departed: 28th January 2024

Favourite sight: Railway Museum :-)

Average Cost: £22.20 PPPD

Mysore, now called Mysuru, is known as the City of Palaces - and it has many such magnificent buildings. It also has a railway museum though, with a lovely style and a great vibe! We spent three superb days here exploring just a few of it's attractions.

24th January 2024

Today was a bit of a wipe-out/travel day really, as we were up at 5AM to catch our train from Chennai back west towards Mysore. Arriving at Mysore station after lunch, we managed to Uber a tuk-tuk to our hotel, although he did make us walk a few hundred meters up the road from the station before he would pick us up!

We checked into our sports themed accommodation, with a massive room and bathroom, and collapsed for a couple of hours to try and make up for our truncated nights sleep. We managed to amble downstairs to the hotel's restaurant for dinner, which was very good; I particularly appreciated a bowl of Cream of Tomato Soup! We then retired for the night in the hope of getting a better look at Mysore the next day.

25th January

When we woke up today I was feeling quite a bit better, and managed to eat almost all of the spicy dosa I was offered for breakfast. We were then ready and raring to explore Mysore, starting with the magnificent Mysore Palace, which is the second most visited site in India after the Taj Mahal.

We decided to try walking here as it wasn't a great distance, and we actually found Mysore's streets surprisingly walkable. Many of them even had functional pavements, which is very much a rarety in most of the parts of India we've visited.

The palace was awesome! This one was built in the early 19th century, following the desctruction by fire of the previous 17th century building, and was designed by an English architect in the Indo-Saracenic style that was prevalent at the time. It is a beautiful building both outside and in, with several magnificent pillared halls, and a beautifully framed view of the building from it's imposing gate.

From the Palace we went to a promising sounding coffee shop, which served decent coffee, but also a simple cheese toast type snack that I was able to eat all of. Two meals out of two for the day left me feeling like I was on the mend. Empowered by this we went on to another palace!

The Jaganmohan Palace was an older, simpler building, which served as the home of Mysore's ruling family whilst the new palace was being built. It was extensively refurbished in the early 2000's, and now serves as an eclectic but fascinating art gallery. As well as the usual selection of religious paintings - most of which are quite entertaining - there are a number of the old Mahorajah's posessions which show a real fascination with science and how things worked, including clocks imported from Europe and an Astralabe showing the solar system. We really enjoyed this gallery, which extended to three floors, including some very interesting murals on the third floor.

We walked back to our acommodation from here, trying to suss bus station locations on the way, ahead of our onward journey in a few days. After a brief rest we executed a carefully made plan for dinner - we went to the modern shopping mall, close to the hotel! For my still slightly delicate stomach, the opportunity to have a plain tuna Subway was just too good to miss out on!

26th January

Today we headed out to visit Mysore's railway museum! We've been to a few places with railway museums on our travels - and are always interested to see how they vary in content, presentation and approach, and compare them to our own spectacular national museum in York. This one was great! As well as plenty of locos and carriages that you could clamber all over and explore, there was a toy train taking you round the (small) grounds, and various covered exhibitions talking about the history of India's railways. We loved it, and spent nearly two hours here.

From the railway museum we headed into the centre of town where we had an excellent lunch in  local restaurant, before exploring the massive open market. Walking through huge piles of produce, flowers, and all sorts of herbs and spices was quite a feast for the senses!

Our afternoon and evening were an action replay of the previous day - even down to the tuna subway for me - although I could tell I was on the mend as I went for a footlong.

27th January

Today we headed out to see The Duke of Wellington's former home, from when he was the governer of Mysore province. For an early 19th century  building, it had a suprisingly art-deco like appearance, and was an impressive building in large grounds. The building is now a museum, focussing on Indian peoples - although it is not very well maintained, and had no power on the day we visited! The upstairs is supposedly an art gallery but was closed when we arrived, and it didn't look temporary.

From here we caught a tuk-tuk to the beautiful Karanji Nature Park. Just next door to Mysore Zoo, this park centres around a large lake, but includes various ewll maintained walkways and neatly labelled plant specimens - mainly trees and different varieties of bamboo. There is also a large Aviary containing a number of beautiful peacocks, as well as an Orchid house and various greenhouses.

After a light lunch of Parotha, and an excellent Latte, we retreated to our hotel for the evening.

28th January

Today we left Mysore behind, having enjoyed three lovely days here. We caught a tuk-tuk to the bus station, where we managed to find an air-conditioned bus going to our next destination - Ooty hill station.