11th January 2005 Medikeri – Mysore 4 ½ hours

After reading the Lonely Planet bible I got the impression that Mysore was going to be quite chilled out but I couldn’t of been more wrong. Mysore is a large market town known for its silk and sandalwood. It’s CHAOS! When you get a seat on a roof top restaurant and get views of every kind of vehicle driving around roundabouts the wrong way whilst people are walking and parking around it at the same time, that’s when I found it very amusing. Everywhere you look there is a market stall selling everything from food and clothes to flowers, this makes for a noisy, smelly town bursting with life. There seems to be a large crowd of gamblers here as there is a whole street dedicated to selling lottery tickets. The enclosed Devaraja market sells predominately fruit, veg and flowers. As well as fantastic photo opportunities the smell of the fresh garlands was wonderful.
One of the other major sites to visit in Mysore is the elegant Maharaja’s palace, which has been well preserved inside and out so the grounds were a welcome break from the town. But it has been spoilt by the 90,000 light bulbs fixed to the fascia. These are turned on every Sunday from 7pm-8pm which I made a joke about saying that when the lights are turned on I bet there is a power cut throughout the town while the palace stands lit up. We experienced the lights being turned on for the Friday evening for some kind of cow festival. It looked like some kind of Walt Disney film and guess what the rest of the town were sitting in darkness.
In tribute to the cow festival the cows and bulls were decorated. As well as their horns being painted, some finished with glitter and tinsel (very camp); their actual bodies were painted bright colors. I think they just do it to make the cows feel silly. The following morning you could still see the decorated cows, still with tinsel, working in the fields, hilarious. Only India!
Paul and I had both been ill, one after the other thank god so we ended up leaving a day later then planned. It was sadly time to say goodbye to Mark as our journey was now taking us to the north and Mark was going in the opposite direction. The three of us had become quite compatible traveling together; we could pack ourselves and our luggage into a rickshaw in a matter of seconds. Paul ended up being king ‘shithead’ for the Indian card league but the competition will continue in South East Asia where we plan to cross paths with Mark once again.