Mysore and Sleeping In Kochi

Rehabilitation Of the Chamindeshwai Temple

Outside Of the Chamindeshwai Temple

We had the morning to continue exploring Mysore so we started off with a visit to the Chamindeshwai Temple. Set high on top of a hill at 3400 feet, this temple is over 100 years old and is now undergoing rehabilitation. It's an active place.

Moped Blessing

We saw a priest bless a new moped. The bike was garlanded and stood on its center stand. The owner smashed a coconut on the ground, in front of the bike. The priest then walked around the bike a few times, rubbed a paste on its headlight, handle-bars and seat and gave the owner 2 small lemons to put under the front and back tires to crush while driving over them. End of service.

I watched with keen interest, I now know how to do this. If you want your Bike blessed in a similar way, my charge is $ 200 per blessing. – A bargain, I saw what the Indian biker paid the priest –

Owner About To Smash Coconut On the Ground
Note Lemons Under the Wheels

Signs were posted around the temple proclaiming a “No Plastic Zone“. This effort of creating zones hopefully will pay off and will reduce the trash that accumulates everywhere in India. Good idea, if it is enforced. Bins were set up to collect plastics.

Hinduism is truly a way of life, people were praying inside the Temple and there were many ‘stations’ where the priests collected donations for a yellow or white bindi or some water to splash, some flower pedals to spread, etc. each activity costing money. It was a busy Temple. Outside, even within the Temple grounds, beggars were asking for help.

Temple Priests Selling Offerings To Lord Shiva

 Monkeys looked on or hopped around. Naturally one had to enter without shoes on. Photos were forbidden. Idols (statues) of the deity Shiva inside the Temple just sat and watched the goings one. The Deity statues were lit up and richly decorated. I believe that Shiva was well admired here.

Large Granite Nandi, Transport For Lord Shiva

On the way down from the temple we stopped at a Nandi; this is the 5^th largest Nandi in India. A Nandi represents the transport Shiva uses when traveling. This Nandi was carved out of one large granite rock, which had always been just standing there. People just ‘helped‘ to create an image that they could understand better when they carved the rock. This rock, this Nandi, is periodically washed, oiled and then covered with a mixture of ash and turmeric. This procedure protects it but has turned the Nandi black.

St. Philomena

Now we were off to the airport in Bangalore, a 4 hour bus ride to get there. Mysore has a perfectly good airport, brand new even, but…we have to drive to Bangalore to catch a flight to Cochin (Kochi). The new airport in Mysore was built in 2011 so why isn’t it open by now? Every tourist has to come and go via Bangalore, 4 hours away.

St. Philomena Catholic Church

On the way to Bangalore we stopped at St. Philomena Church, a Catholic Church. She is a Saint and a relic of her was obtained in France and is now in a crypt downstairs in this church. By order of the Maharaja this large cathedral was built to replace a much smaller church that stood in its place. The cathedral is a copy of the Gothic style dome of Cologne, Germany. It was finished in 1952.

Extracting a Green Liquid From Raw Sugar Cane

 We also stopped along the way at a sugar press (factory?). I have a difficult time writing the word factory. Let's say a place where sugarcane is crushed and then boiled down to get raw sugar. It was not on the tour schedule but was a good stop. It had a machine to crush the sugar cane, belt driven, powered by electricity that was the only machine in the whole place. The rest was all done by hand and could have been thousands of years old. The juice of the sugar cane was boiled in a pot until it crystallized, voila sugar. The whole yard, all the rooms were full of sugar cane. People slept there at night,

Boiled Then Stirred Until Thickened Then Put in Molds (Behind
the Stirrer). Tastes A Bit Like Maple Sugar

right on the cane. It was a mess but…. They made sugar, Jaggery as they call it.

The process is as primitive as it gets but the end result were large sugar cubes that were sold in the market place. This is a hard way to make a living. I saw 4 people “living” inside the ‘factory’ but those were just the workers I assume. The whole installation was shockingly low tech.

Now What Do I Do With This?

We had a lunch stop along our route someplace.
It was a busy place, very typical South Indian cuisine. Food was served to me on a banana leaf, utensils were my right hand. The food was excellent. And I could get as much food as I could possibly eat.  Not everybody in our group ate like this but they missed something special. It was outstanding. And an experience besides, because eating with my right hand, just using my fingers to scoop up food, is not what I do often. It is a normal thing in this southern region of India to eat like this. We watched Lakuma eat her lunch on her banana leaf, wow she is good at it. The used banana leaves are fed to animals or used for compost.

Difficult to Tear Bread With One Hand

On this bus ride we leaned the following:

Horses were not native to India; they only arrived with Alexander the Great around 300 BCE. Hmmm!

Face painting for priests. Turmeric and lime mixed gives a red color.  White ash comes from burning cow dung, from temple cows of course. Two red horizontal lines on a priest’s forehead means he worships Shiva, red and white vertical lines means he worships Vishnu. If a person smears these ashes all over his body it will reduce a fever.

Lakuma, With All Her Practice, Ate the Whole Meal With One Hand.
Her Left Hand Is Kept Hidden During the Meal

A priest has a 12 year education to become a priest.

There are words we use in English that are pure Indian words: bungalow, catamaran, etc. I was told many but do not remember more.

Jaggery recipe and other food goodies:

Boil water; add jaggery, ginger and lime then let sit overnight. Good to prevent dehydration. Many South Indians drink this every day.

When hot food is dished out on the banana leaf it absorbs some chlorophyll into the food which is a disease preventative.

Add buttermilk and yogurt in a pot, boil, and let sit…apply on skin when cooled. Good against sunburn.

We learned a lot from you, Lakuma, thank you.

Lakuma said good-bye to us at the airport; she is flying back to her husband.

We are off to Cochin, now called Kochi.

Train ride

When I was young I worked for a while in a bakery shop, after school hours, mostly cleaning pots and pans. It takes a lot of scrubbing to get those baked-on crumbs off. The people I worked for liked me, they would have loved for me to be an apprentice, but starting work at 2 AM was not for me. Here I am, on ‘vacation’ getting up at 3 AM…..groan.

Still Dark As We Arrive At the Station

The train leaves at 6 and with packing the bus, driving to the train station, finding the right train, hauling suitcases around, we thought it would take a while. Lakuma was not there, she arrived a bit late, so Fiona and Gary had to negotiate all. They did fine, we were early and nobody had to haul luggage, all taken care of. The train ride from Chennai Central to Mysore takes 7 to 8 hours on this express. So we relaxed, the hotel had prepared a breakfast box for each of us.

Have you been in a large train station lately? Chennai’s is huge, old but well-kept and yes, huge. I felt I entered a special world, not related to life outside. Even the people waiting for

Inside the Cavernous Train Station

 something, sitting, sleeping on or near the platforms look different. Hand carts stand around, some loaded, some not. Packages wrapped in burlap, porters looking for work. A train station, especially this large, in a big city, is a town in itself. We had first class seats which meant lots of space, A/C and seat service. We were served coffee and yes, another breakfast and also, later on, a nice lunch. Indian style of course, but we are in India. The train left on time, exactly at 6 AM. We were on the Shatabdhi Express Train, electric and fast. Outside temperature at 4.45 AM was a sultry 27 C (84F).

Long Modern Train

Buzzing along at high speed we saw the country whiz by. Some towns or villages were clean, some not so. I have taken many train rides in the world and always found that the tracks are used as dumping places for the trash that people need to get rid of. So I prepared myself for the worst in India, but it was not bad. I was even impressed on how clean some towns looked.

Someone Left In a Hurry?

 

 

Oblivious In the Station

India has a large and old railroad system. The regular, common trains can be overcrowded I read, I only saw the nicer side of India's RR system. It worked well, was fast, clean and had all the amenities one could want.

Mysore, Still Some Trash About

We arrived in Mysore in the afternoon and just dropped off our bags, then took a bus to the Palace. Lakuma, whom I did not see in the train, was our guide. We had to deposit our cameras at a station, no pictures allowed inside the Mysore city palace. Yes, we could take some outside pictures.

Entrance To the City Palace Is Free Of Trash

Mysore is advertised as the 2nd cleanest city in all of India because they have greatly restricted the use of plastic, I am told. I am not sure what criteria were used to make that statement but you can read the qualifications by clicking on the link above. There were certainly less plastic bags and bottles around. The mix of old, colonial and Indian housing was pleasant to look at. The road layout, the old trees planted during the British rule added to the orderly look, yet this is India. The claim: 2^nd cleanest town? It is all relative!

The Mysore Palace:   by now, having traveled India, having seen some grand palaces I wondered why we had to see this Palace, too? Is it really that special?  Look, we just traveled 8 hours by train to come here to see this place, how GRAND is it? We were told that after the Taj Mahal, this is the 2^nd most visited sight in India.

Another Building On the Palace Grounds

The first Palace built here was from the 14^th Century, but it was ripped down a few times to finally create the present Palace. It was finished in 1912 and no expense was spared. In fact even after 1912 and as late as 1940, things, rooms, gardens, temples, etc. were added to this complex. The whole installation is large and reminded me of Versailles. Grandiose splendor, let them eat cake. There is this golden seat for the top of an elephant, 750 kg in weight. It took 8 people to fit the seat to the elephant. There are large silver doors inside the Palace. Other doors made out of rosewood inlaid with ivory. Intricately carved teak

Close-Up Of the Intricate Carving On the Above Building

ceilings, hand painted tiled floors. Not one, but 2 Dunbar halls (reception rooms), marbled in rare colored marble, splendid and more splendid. The main, stained glass cupola was made in Glasgow Scotland. The throne room left nothing to wish for. It seemed that taste was secondary, as long as it was the most expensive way to decorate. Well, taste is subjective; I really did not like Versailles either. The opulence was over the top for my taste. In my mind I saw the men outside covering the rose garden with cow manure, amid all the stink of it, too. India had this heritage, I know it but sometimes it is difficult to look at, like in this case.

Main Entrance To the Main Palace

And the British, who fully supported this builder, this Maharajah, and even installed him into power,  were ultimately responsible for it all. The Maharajah would subdue his subjects so that the British could reap even more benefits. The British gave him all the power, supported him, helped him in his squandering, even encouraged this Maharajah, and backed him up. Yuk! It was overload for me. It was too much.

I guess if you just came, had a look around, let yourself be amazed at the former wealth, it's a nice enough place. The hype of Mysore being the 2^nd cleanest city is over rated.  Mysore’s Palace 2^nd main attraction in India? Hmmmm!

One Side Of the Main Palace

The total complex had several (7?) temples within its walls. Mysore itself has other palaces as well, but none as grand as this City Palace.

Fierce Palace Guardian

 We progressed from the over-the-top richness of the Palace to the city’s old spice market. Devaraj fruit and vegetable market the sign read. It was well swept and kept orderly. The aroma of all the spices overwhelmed my olfactory senses. There were hundreds of sellers, the prices were low but I was in no position to buy anything.

Sweets In the Devaraj Fruit and Vegetable Market

 The colors of all the offerings were a photo op however. Lakuma felt at home here, I could just tell. I had a bit of a hard time following Lakuma and tried not to get lost in the maze of the market. In the end all was fine. Carol bought a bindi set; we looked at saffron, 400 Rupees/gram (US$ 6.15) but did not buy the spice. In my way of cooking I never use saffron.

Mysore is known for its sandalwood, a very expensive wood. Buying from a government source, if you can get it, costs US$ 200. per Kg plus tax (Jan 2017 price).  A piece of wood, that expensive?

Colourful Spices

The oil from this wood costs way more, a bit more than $2000 a kilo. Did we buy some? No! The oil is mostly used in Hindu special services and Mysore seems to be one of the centers for its production.

Silk and Incense, besides tourism, are the other industries bringing money to the towns coffers.

We Had No Clue What Most Of the Vegetables Were
But They Were Very Colourful

Our Guide Lakuma With Another Of Her Beautiful Saris