Saturday, July 31, 2010

Weekend in Mysore

Just so that someone might benefit from it, here is my travelogue.

Our target was to leave by 6am from Bangalore but we could leave only by 6:40. The weather was cloudy and early morning winds were soothing. I took the Nice road to bypass the city but later I regretted it. It was because there is a small stretch of Nice road which is incomplete and the diversion road is too bad. I badly scrapped the under chasis for the first time.
Other than that Nice road is pure heaven.

I had read a lot about the breakfast at Kamat Loka Ruchi. So I had decided to stop by. The restaurant is on the right side of road (if coming from bangalore) and there is a huge board saying KAMAT. You must look for it after coming out about 3/4km from Ramnagara. Food was indeed good & true to the reputation. There was a huge crowd there. We got a table after waiting for about 5 mins. Reached kamat at 9:30 and were ready to move by 10:05.




Next stop was Sri Rangapatnam. This is an island city of Tipu Sultan. Island because it is surrounded by river from all sides. We visited Dariya Daulat bagh and later went to Sangam. We took the coracle (round boat) ride there. It was short but very nice. The coracle person charged rs 100 for about 10 min ride.


Next we went inside the city and visited Ranga Swamy temple. Here Bhagwan Vishnu is shown lying on shesh shayya (only temple showing the lord in this posture). There are a lot more interesting places in Sri Ranga Patnam. The city is full of historical monuments. But as we were getting late, we decided to leave them for later and headed for mysore.



Next stop was Mysore palace. we reached the palace by around 1:30pm. There are two sides of the palace but main entrance is only one. I reached the wrong side and parked there. There were also some other vehicles parked there along with some tangas. Soon a tangawala came and told me that this is not the main entrance (which was right), then he said it is lunch time and palace is closed for one hour from 1:30 to 2:30. So during this time, why dont we hire his tanga and roam around the city for just Rs 50. Although it was tempting and I wanted to take a tanga, we didn't have much time to spare and were feeling very hungry. So we decided to take lunch after checking out the main entrance. It turned out that the Palace was OPEN. he was lying. we went inside the palace (you have to take a ticket) and were done in about 1 hour. Palace has been nicely maintained. There are some camel and elephant rides which can be taken inside the palace.




Also there is a shop called cauvery inside the palace which sells all sorts of handicraft goods & sandalwood products (mysore is famous for sandalwood and silk products). The shop looked trustworthy and we bought some products like sandal perfume and incense sticks.
As we exited the main palace, there are a couple of museums inside the complex. There was one guy who was trying to force people to visit it as if it was compulsory. Quite strange and funny.



we left the palace by 3:30 and headed towards Brindavan gardens (aka KRS dam). Stopped by some restaurant en-route to take lunch but the food was horrible. It drizzled a little when we reached KRS but only for a small time. Reached the top. The view was too good. The crowd was not much at that time because the main attraction of the garden (musical fountain) begins at 7pm. I had decided to skip it because we had seen similar shows before. Though we took the boat ride which leads to the site of the show and came back. I have read that during evening/night, this place gets very crowded, so take care of that.

we left the gardens by 6 and headed towards the palace again which is illuminated at night. On Saturdays, it is for half an hour from 7 to 7:30 and one hour on Sundays. Reached there exactly at 7. Lights were already ON. The view was amazing. It is a must-not-miss sight. Around 90,000 bulbs light up the entire Palace. Can not go inside the palace at night. Hence you have to visit it twice.

Next day we started early at 6:30 and left for chamundi hills. Road is part good, part bad. Reached the temple by 7:15. Temple opens at 7:30.
There are 3 types of darshans: Free, Special (20) and express (100). We entered the Special Darshan queue. It took about 45 minutes for darshans. It is a must visit in early morning for the view and the whole environment. Devi Chamundi killed Mahisharura (after whom the mysore is named) on this hill.
we spent some time on the mysore view spot and visited the bull statue. Due to the whole environment, this visit became the highlight of the tour.

Reached back in city by 9:30. After breakfast we headed towards Mysore zoo. After taking the entry ticket, there is an option of taking the ticket of battery car which is good deal if you are even slightly tired and have less time. Since we were feeling fresh, we decided to go on foot. The zoo is very impressive and it takes about 4km walk and 3 hrs to complete it. I dont see a great deal of difference between mysore zoo and singapore zoo.

we headed back to bangalore by 2:30pm. Stopped at Maddur Tiffanyys (there are a lot of tiffany tiffannyss tiffanies etc at close distance. so i am not sure if i entered the right one) en route to eat the famous maddur vada. Reached bangalore by 5:30 and another one hour to reach home.

5 comments:

  1. Hi,
    Very informative write up. I am also planning for a 2 day and 1 night Mysore tour. So I want to know a few things about the place :
    1. Is it so that one can't enter the Mysore palace campus (outside the palace) at night to take pictures? Can we take pics of the outside of the palace?
    2. Can you suggest a place where we can stay over the night?
    3. A rough estimate of the total kms you covered in this trip as I would be booking a cab.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, Hopefully I am not late enough for the answers.
    1. No, Can not enter the inside of the palace but visitors are allowed to enter palace gardens and take pictures from there.
    2. We were late for bookings of hotel. Ginger hotel can be a good choice.
    3. Don't recall but something in the range of 400KM
    Have a nice trip!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Khushi, had u visited??? If you can tell me the CAB u had booked

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ooh,thank yoo.
    Helpd me in completing english travelogue writing(homework),abt mesmerising mysore.
    :-), uplod more

    ReplyDelete
  5. very detailed and informative post..........

    ReplyDelete