So my job had required me to fly to India on the last week before Christmas, my very first travel trip out since the pandemic took the whole world by storm in the early year of 2020.
I took a flight from Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur at about 10pm on a Saturday night where I did a 5-hour transit before flying off to Chennai where I’d be spending another 5 hours before taking a domestic flight to Bangalore.
Things were uneventful, except for the transits that we had to endure through and I had never liked transits, although they are unavoidable at times especially when they involve some budgeting and lack of flight options. If there was something that is worth mentioning about, it’d be the brand new airports of Chennai and Bangalore whose structural and architectural features had had me in awe.
Airports in India that I noticed would not allow anybody to go back out once you have already entered the terminal building so you’ll just have to make sure you have already done everything that you wanted to do outside of the building before making your way in. We encountered a little bit of problem when we wanted to wrap up our luggage and they wouldn’t allow us to go back out to the wrapping service which we found out quite too late was located outside of the terminal building. It took us the best persuasive skills before we were allowed to – but seriously it was not easy. India has some of the most disciplined and systematic systems in the world so it was not at all surprising that they’d stick to them no matter what.
The first thing that instantly surprised me the moment I set foot in Bangalore was the weather. Bangalore is located on the Southern half of India so I expected a sizzling hot weather. How wrong I was. The temperature must be around 23 degree Celsius during the day and it’d dip to 18 degree Celsius at night. Walking out in the open felt like walking in a spring season in Europe or something. It was almost illogical geographically, but I found myself so pleasantly surprised.
After doing what we had to do in Bangalore, we travelled about 3 hours on a mostly newly upgraded expressways to the city of Mysore in the far South of the state of Karnataka. That was when the real essence of the trip began. It really felt like a real road trip adventure. I couldn’t help but playing the song Jai Ho in my head while wheezing past a diversity of landscapes, vast farms, beautiful small towns and villages along the way.
Checking in at a hotel called Lok Sagar, Mysore that I found out is a melting pot of different cultures and religions. There were beautiful temples everywhere, then you’d see a mosque here and there, then churches with impressive structures and architectures. I had actually never heard of Mysore before then, but the guy that I was sitting next to on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Chennai did mention about it as a place he recommended me to visit.
We went to a Hindu temple called Sri Chamundeshwari that sits atop a hill from where we could see almost the whole stretch of the city. The temple was packed with pilgrims and devotees who came in hordes, probably from all over India. There were large groups of school kids in uniforms – and some of them would come and take pictures with us for the obvious reason – we were different and there was no way we could walk around without looking different. We did a little bit of hiking to a spot from where we could see the whole stretch of the Mysore city. Our guide promised to take us back to the place at night when the whole city went alight but it never got done unfortunately.
We also travelled around 25km to the South East, to a place called Brindavan Gardens which is located on the brink of a massive lake called Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS). Brindavan Gardens itself is a strip of beautiful gardens which is separated from the lake by a massive dam called KRS dam. The dam was intended to irrigate water to agricultural areas and as a source of drink water to several major cities including Mysore itself and Bangalore – the capital city of Karnataka.
Not quiet in the mood of walking under the sizzling sun (unlike in Bangalore where the weather was cold), we rented a buggy car to take us around the garden. Since the garden is a government property, they buggy drivers didn’t really like the idea of us renting a whole car, but of course with a little bit of price negotiation, they finally gave in.
The garden was certainly beautiful, but what impressed me most was the massive 20m wall of the dam that stretched for about 3KM. Unfortunately, we could only marvel at it from just down the wall, as anything beyond it was off-limits. We stayed there long enough to see the hordes of people who came by the thousands to watch the fountain display with the wall as the backdrop but we were too tired to join them despite the tour guide’s insistence (watching the fountain display required us to walk some distance away, on a bridge across the Kaveri River and judging from the continuous trickles of people that walked on the bridge – it was certainly a sardine-packed audience that we did not want to be a part of). I promised the guide that I’d go and join the audience if I were to go there again – if ever.
The highlight of the whole trip to Mysore was certainly our tour to the Mysore Palace – which granted Mysore the title of the City of Palaces. Joining the hordes of people who probably came from all over India, the palace certainly magnified the fact that India is certainly a place of architectural and monumental wonders. The construction of the palace was commissioned by a Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV to replace the old palace which was destroyed by fire during a wedding in 1896.
If the grandeur of Taj Mahal lies in the simplicity of its design and the macabre story behind the commissioning of its construction, the Mysore Palace’s certainly lies within the sophistication and intricacy of its architectural features and designs. I couldn’t help but noticing some European – probably a combination of Gothic and Roman influences in the architectural features – which came as a no surprise as I found out deeper in my Google search that the architect was a British. I wish the fire that destroyed the old palace never happened – or rather – the wedding during which it was caught in fire never took place so that the architectures would have been more Indian. Heh.
I could spend the whole day marvelling at the beautiful columns, the wall paintings and the carvings but of course we had to keep moving on. The trickles of people on the long lines wouldn’t permit us to stay around for too long – but of course there was always time to take photos. In fact, I remember taking dozens and dozens of them I don’t even know where they are now. LOL.
The first standing structures that immediately caught my eyes when I first arrived in Mysore had come from a church which – after a little bit of Googling – was apparently the St. Philomena’s Cathedral. Standing at 53m in height, there is no way one can avoid noticing the twin spires that jot out from the church even from a long distance way. Making my way into the church, it was surprisingly smaller that it looked from the outside.
They were obviously busy doing up the decoration for the upcoming Christmas and most of the space was cordoned off hence the brief entry. The church must have been repainted from its original colours, so it looked quite new with some Disney-looks which was different from most other churches that were built during the colonial times in other countries that I’ve been to where the original paints (or rather no paints) are kept intact to maintain their old and dilapidated looks.
But of course, of all the places that I’ve been to all throughout my visit to Mysore, the streets were certainly my favourites. After a long hiatus from travelling, it felt so good to be back in the dusty and noisy streets of India. They might not be as busy and noisy as those streets that I’ve been to in say- New Delhi or Varanasi, but they are still very much the kind of streets in India that I had really longed to be back to for quite some time. There was always something to see and watch and be mesmerized with somewhere around the corner.
There was this bazaar street called Dubai Center (not sure if that was the real name) that we kept coming back to several times all throughout our stay in Mysore. It was a street bazaar with shops selling arrays of clothes and garments including Sari, Silk-wears and Muslim attires.
Looking for good food was obviously not a problem at all. Mysore is populated with a significant number of Muslims so looking for Halal and no-vegetarian food was also not a problem. In fact, I ate more that I did in my previous trips to India so with the Christmas and New Year were very much just down the road, I had every reason to be worried about my diet and body weight. I noticed how Mysore lacked the street food that I’d see in abundance in New Delhi, Jaipur and Varanasi so it was safe to say that hawking street food doesn’t seem to be a culture in this part of India.
Returning to Malaysia was quiet a hassle, with a delay of the flight from Bangalore to Kuala Lumpur by at least 4 hours and we missed our connecting flight back to Kota Kinabalu. I had to stay overnight in Kuala Lumpur before I caught a flight back to KK where Christmas frenzy was waiting for me.