Mysore misery
Thom in Indiareis 2018 2018-05-14 13:40, laatste update 2020-09-30 13:00
6.30. it's way too early to get out of bed. But we are going on a trip to Mysore and since it's a 3 hour drive we have to leave early to still have some part of our day left. We get picked up by an Indian guy and his bus. The Indian guy seems like a stand up guy, but his English is almost non existent and after seeing him drive I also wonder if he has a license at all.Before going to Mysore we stop on an island on the way there. On the island we visit the Ranganatga Swamy temple. There is a very long line of people in front of the temple. We decide it's worth it and join the queue. After standing in the queue for 20 minutes, in which I had to kindly tell 4 Indian guys I'm not interested in a wooden elephant with a smaller wooden elephant carved inside, we enter the temple.Inside the temple the line of people unfortunately continues. After standing in the queue inside the temple for around half an hour, we enter a room. Another queue. We stand there for another 20 minutes after we enter another room. To no one's surprise this room consists of a line of people slowly moving towards the exit of the room. After standing in line for another 15 minutes again we enter another room. Here there is a line in front of some laying statue of a man. Indian people do their prayers when they reach the statue, we just kind of look at this underwhelming piece of stone and leave the temple again. After the temple we visit some dungeon. We get a tour by the security guard, who apparently also functions as a guide here and move on to some long dead sultan's summer palace. From the outside it looked like an ugly building, but inside it looked quite nice. There were some nice paintings and sketches hanging on the walls, of which some had impressive drawings themselves as well. After the sultan's summer palace we went to the same sultan his tombe. After going inside, the most boring Indian person I met here starts telling us in the most monotone way possible that here lies the sultan's and his parents, and outside his wife and kids. After finishing his 1 minute story he demands money. We give him 20 rupees but this guy, being the attention paying mad man he is, sees a 100 rupee bill in my wallet and kindly asks if I don't want to give him that one. After declining and leaving, we go back to the bus that drove us here and continue our way to Mysore. We get in Mysore at around 2 in the afternoon, and most people are hungry by now. We decide to eat in the most depressing KFC I ever saw, on the, except for the KFC, completely empty third floor of some building. The food itself was okay and not that expensive, so I didn't care. After lunch we went to the Big palace in the centre of the city. The palace was quite large and there were a lot of Indian people also visiting. After taking off our shoes, which was mandatory if you wanted to enter the palace, we went inside. Inside the palace were even more Indian people in an even smaller space. Several of the Indian people inside the palace decided I was a bigger attraction then the famous building they were in, so they asked to take selfies with me. After an hour of having Indian people on all sides standing as close to us as they can, we had seen the whole palace from the inside so we went outside again. In the gardens of the palace, in some corner, there were some elephants. This was very cool so we went over there and looked. I touched an elephant. It was hella tight. After the elephants we went back to the bus and asked him to drive up a hill, where there was another temple. After looking at the temple we walked around on the top of the hill for a bit. There was a guy selling corn on the street. But since this is India, some cow came and ate the corn. After we were done laughing at this, there were again some Indian people who wanted to take a picture with us. It was already getting late, and since driving back to the hotel would take 3 hours, we decided to go back. We got in the bus and headed back to the hotel. At around 8 we stopped at a collection of restaurants next to the road. I was done with rice and curry after two and a half weeks so I decided to get pizza. Although not as good as pizza anywhere else in this world, it was still pizza so I had a great time eating it. After everyone was done eating we got back on the road again. We drove for a while when traffic started to get slower and slower and after a short while we were completely stuck. Our driver did not like the pace at which we were going, so he was desperately looking for a solution. This solution came in the form of a small opening in the middenberm. The other side of the road, with cars going the other way, wasn't as busy as our side. Actually it was almost empty. So who can blame an Indian guy for thinking well I can just go against the traffic. It will go way faster. So our busdriver decided to use the small opening in the road devider and get on the wrong side of the road. Driving against traffic. This seemed to work fine for almost a 100 metres. Then traffic also got stuck on the other side of the road, with cars trying to go in both directions on the same lane. After standing still on the wrong side of the road for a couple of minutes, our bus driver decided to swallow his pride and turn his bus around. After turning his bus around in the middle of the highway he drove back to the opening in the road devider and got back to the right side of the road. There was still a massive traffic jam so getting back to the hotel took another 3 hours. And we only got back at around 1. Luckily I'm stupid and stayed awake until 2:30. Even though the next they I had to get up at 7:45. Fun.
