Trip to Mysore

Two posts that I read recently convinced me that I should blog about a trip to Mysore (home of the Mysore bonda) that my family took. The first is this post from Kiruba Shankar. The connection between that post and this one will be obvious very shortly. The second post is this old post by Vikrum Sequeira. The connection between that post and this one is not so obvious and you will have to wait to the end of this post to find out.

We spent nearly a week in the state of Karnataka in Southern India. We were there primarily to visit the Kabini River Lodge in Nagarahole National Park. That stay deserves a post in itself, so this post will describe the journey.

The start of the journey was leaving our nice hotel room at the Accord. We checked out very late (7:00 P.M.) but the Accord gave us permission to do so. This is something different in India: hotels and other places really go out of their way to accommodate people, (well, people like our family with some money). We then boarded a sleeping train for an overnight journey to Mysore.

My son absolutely loved the sleeping train. He loved climbing on the bunks and looking out the window and maybe just the fact that this was like a hotel on wheels. I absolutely hated it. It was one of the worst nights I have spent in years. I didn’t sleep more than an hour: the bunk was so hard and uncomfortable.

I’ve gotten soft over time. Ten years ago, I didn’t mind but now I do. I told my parents later that I’m getting too old for that type of thing and my father (who is 40 years older than me) laughed and said, “welcome to the club, but I didn’t think you would join so soon.”

One thing I didn’t like about the train was the toilet. It really reeked. And my son had an accident trying to use it (on a shaky train) and needed to change clothes. I tend to overreact in such situations and get all flustered. My wife gets irritated: “Why are you telling the whole train that he had an accident?” It never occurred to me to care what other people on the train might think.

We then went to the Lalitha Mahal Hotel. Here is a picture of the Lalitha Mahal Hotel (via Kiruba Shankar).
It turns out that Kiruba visited the same hotel just this week so there are many other views of this hotel there. We saw all of those places – excellent photos.

The hotel used to be the summer vacation palace of the Maharaja of Mysore. The main palace is in the heart of Mysore and we visited that as well. The hotel was nice but the room was only comfortable – a big step down from the Accord. The room had a funny odor that bothered my wife a lot. I think it was the bed covers. I don’t think they had been washed in years. We learned to remove those immediately and keep them in a drawer. A curious custom in Indian hotels is to come around at 6:00 and remove the bed covers. Well – we already had done that.

We spent much of the day just recovering from the (terrible) train trip. I think it would have been more sensible to fly into Bangalore and take a car to Mysore. But, anyway, I eventually got up and walked around the nice gardens at the hotel.

The food at the hotel was good. We ate the Mysore Thali that offered an excellent sampling of local foods. My son tried the spaghetti – which was a mistake.

In the afternoon, we visited the palace of the Maharaja’s. It is enormous. Obviously, being a Maharaja was a good life. Here is one photo and a link to a description of the palace.


We went to the Kabini River lodge, had a wonderful stay, and then returned to Mysore to the Lalitha Mahal Hotel. We then spent the day doing some shopping. We spent much of it in a government run handicraft store. The government subsidizes the local artists so that the crafts do not die out. But I saw no need for a government intervention: there was plenty of market in the U.S. and other places for this artwork. You could get nice carved elephants, furniture, paintings, inlaid wood scenes, and other wonderful things, for very good prices. If anything, the government intervention here seemed to be stifling competition and variety (the artists seemed to be in a rut in terms of themes).

On the way back to the train station, the driver could not find room for our luggage in the car so he put it in a rack on the roof (which is not at all uncommon). What was odd and made me very upset when I found out is that he had not bothered to strap the luggage down. He told my father-in-law that it was just a short trip to the train station and he would be careful driving there. Well, luckily for us, none of the luggage fell off, but I saw no reason to take such a risk. But one reason why he was lazy was because he lacked bungee cords (the big rubber-band like straps that hold luggage). India still tends to use rope and rope takes time to use. I did see one car with bungee cords but that was the exception. They cost more, but they save time. It is interesting that the idea of paying a little more for a device that save a little time each trip is not popular in India but taking a risk (with someone else’s very expensive luggage) to save some time is something Indians will consider.

I slept a little better on the train back to Chennai. Going back to the Accord, I felt all disheveled since I had not shaved or bathed and had slept in my clothes. I joked with my wife that I was reminded of the scene in the film “Die Another Day” in which James Bond walks into a swanky Hong Kong hotel after escaping from prison. He has a long beard. He is only wearing pajamas and looks like he hasn’t bathed in years. But with his normal James Bond swagger and aplomb, he just strolls into the hotel like he owns it. The fact that he has no way to pay for anything bothers him not a bit. My wife appreciated the analogy.

This is where the post from Vikram Sequeira fits in. He describes how people from lower classes in India are excluded from places like Barista (a coffee house chain much like Starbucks). In many cases, the people themselves feel they don’t belong in there. I think is somewhat natural to ask the question, “Do I belong here?” if you are not dressed appropriately or if you haven’t bathed recently. But I didn’t really feel that way entering the Accord. I knew that I was welcome in there even if I didn’t smell very pleasant. After all, the showers were right there in our room. But unlike James Bond, I didn’t have to bluff about paying for it.