A trip to Mysore- Part 1

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Zoe isn't feeling well and Ziggy isn't in the mood to write, so they will not add much now.
On Sat. Dec. 27 we left the apartment for Mysore. Our driver once drove for one of the hotels in town and said he made the trip around 150 times, so he knew the way. We stopped at "Barista" for coffee and a sandwich and a modern bathroom on the way. They appear to be an Italian chain with very good coffees and reasonably good light food and snacks, but we just learned that they are owned by the "Tata Group" which is a huge Company here that seems to be respected by most Indians. We continued on to stop at "The Big Banyan Tree" it was a few km off the main road on a good road. Depending on who you believe this one tree covers from 2.5 to 4 acres of land and is the second largest tree in the world in terms of area covered. Banyan trees have branches that drop roots down to the ground that supply nutrients and we guess they grow underground too and send up new trunks too. In any case, the trees looks more like a forest and one would not realize that its all one tree if no one said so.
We continued on to Srirangapatnam. This was a large fort built in the 1700's on an island in a river. The fort was largely destroyed by the British in 1799 and "Tipu Sultan", who was the man in charge of this part of India was killed at that siege. There is a very nice looking Mosque on the grounds, but we did not go in. We went to a Hindu temple that dates from around 1100AD. There were a lot of people at the temple and as we were getting out of the car we thought the driver was telling us to go inside, so we stood in a long line of people that moved very slowly. The line got narrower and narrower as people streamed in and pushed and shoved quite a bit. It was quite unpleasant. We got separated by the crush of people and many pushing in front of each of us. It was also rather warm inside. At the first major shrine inside, Janet went in with the crowd, but was not impressed with what she saw, so we managed to jump out of the line and go around. Once past the first shrine, it was quite open inside and easy to move around and we headed for the exit. Like most temples and mosques, you have to remove shoes to go in and it is normal to pay a small fee to some people who are supposed to keep an eye on them for you (though we have some doubt that they do). Our Driver said 5Rs each. Of course, there was a big group of people trying to get their shoes and when Jim grabbed ours a kid said it was 50Rs. It is customary to ask more of foreigners, we have learned, so we gave him 20 Rs, he insisted it should be 50, but we insisted that 20 was enough and left. The visit to the inside of the temple was unpleasant, but educational. Our driver wondered what took us so long and then said that he said we should NOT go in the temple. The pictures are not in the proper order, but you can probably figure out which is which.
We left the temple for "Tipu's Summer Palace". This is a very interesting place. It is highly decorated with all sorts of colorful patterns and artwork. Much of it has, presumably been restored at one time or other. The guide books like to point out that every surface is decorated and it seems to be true. It is a bit dark inside, but interesting and pretty, none the less. It was hot in the direct sun, but ok in the shade. The fee for foreigners is often 10x to 20x that of Indians.
We then went to the tomb where Tipu and his father are buried. This is an attractive place, but we did not feel like taking our shoes off again, so we did not go inside.
Our next stop was a wildlife santuary- mainly for birds. There were a lot of people around, so we did not take the boat trip on the lake. There were some birds in the trees and there were a few monkeys around looking for food to take. A young one jumped on a sign while we were watching.
We then drove to our hotel in Mysore and checked it. It was not a fabulous place, but OK. We rested for awhile and had a quick dinner. We wanted to visit "Brindavan Gardens ", and the driver said that it would be very crowded on Sunday, so we decided to go on Sat. evening. We road toward the place , but then got stopped in traffic. The driver saw a number of cars and small buses being directed off onto a dirt road, so he followed. After what seemed a long trip on a rough and dusty road we arrived at the Gardens. It was very crowded with cars, buses and people. We left the driver who said he'd park the car, and we waded into the long lines. People pushed ahead and actually stepped over railings to get ahead of us, but we got in. Once inside we were not so impressed- the crowds made it seem less pleasant, but we could not figure out where the music and light show was supposed to be. We finally concluded we should be on the other side of the lake and started the walk over there. It was a big crowd of people making the trip and once on the other side we were practically knocked down by little kids in school uniforms running all over. We decided to make the trip back to the other side of the lake and leave. It was slow and shoving all the way, but it seemed like the Indians were used to it. Once on the other side we tried to call the driver and Jim's mobile phone battery died then. Fortunately, our driver was waiting for us at the exit and found us right away. We went to the car only to find that it was blocked in by 3 other cars. We were afraid we'd be stuck here all night as there were still cars and big buses bringing people in. Our driver is pretty resourceful and so started directing some traffic to get the 3 cars out that were blocking ours- fortunately the drivers were close by. After awhile we hopped into our car and started the long trek out of the garden. It was painful with 2 lanes of traffic trying to come in and one lane trying to go out - on a 2 lane road! The road was in rough shape too! However, we made it back to our hotel safely and decided to start our morning visits early. As we left the place we learned that they had postponed the music and light show until 8:30 from 7:30PM because so many people were still coming into the Gardens. We left about 8:15 without having seen the show. There may still be people waiting to get in! But, this is part India! We had vastly underestimated the number of people who would be traveling over the Christmas long weekend. Sunday was much better. that will be in part 2.