Day 2: The Journey to Mysore Begins

Bangalore, India - Mysore, India

Day 2 consisted of the following:

• Hotel stay at Bangalore
• Catching the bus to Mysore
• Bus trip to Mysore
• Mysore

Tuesday 10th November 2015

Hotel Stay at Bangalore:

We spent the night at the orange suites hotel in Bangalore.  Slept reasonably well, quite comfortable, woke up at around 5am and couldn’t really get back to sleep.  The phone inside the room went off at 7am which was our morning wake up service we asked for.  I still have quite a blocked noise from the Rabies vaccination I had last Tuesday, hoping it will clear up soon.  Since it was now day time I could now see out the window.  I saw a very strange and different environment, everything from dirt roads, stray dogs to motorbikes.  We ordered breakfast from the hotel as it was included in the stay. 
The only item on the breakfast menu that was familiar was "bread toast butter jam", so I ordered two of them and a cup of tea.  Keith ordered a plain "dosa", which is a pancake made from rice flour and ground pulses, a normal southern Indian food. One of the staff jumped on a motorbike and took off down the road to buy it, 10 minutes later it arrived, it was quite nice, very sweet tasting bread, and as Keith said most of the bread is very sweet.  I tried some of Keith's dosa, tasted very plain but quite nice, there were also a few dipping sauces that came with it, of which some were very spicy.

View from outside the hotel in Bangalore

Catching the bus to Mysore:

About 10am our taxi arrived to pick us up from the hotel and take us to the bus stop where we would catch the bus called "Fly Bus" to Mysore.  The bus departs from the airport but we were assured it would pass by this particular bus stop which was closer to the hotel. 

This next experience was one of the most stressful and chaotic experiences I think I've ever had.  No only was there intense crazy traffic literally everywhere, there were people crossing the road in-between cars driving.  The taxi ride only took 5 minutes which we were expecting it to be about 15-20 minutes so we got there at about 10:05am and we expected the bus to pass the stop at about 10:30am, so we were quite early.  We were driving through the main road then randomly stopped at a very busy intersection which the driver pointed across the road and said "there is bus stop", it was literally just the side of the road, no bus stop signs nothing.  As we got out of the taxi and grabbed our bags, there it was - 8 lanes of crazy busy traffic which every single car was beeping their horns, people walking everywhere, an officer blowing his whistle which was doing nothing, and it was raining.  I also realised that I was literally the only white European to be seen and everyone was staring at me.  We couldn't do anything else but put our heads down, cross the road and surprisingly cars just drove around us.  I've never felt so out of place before. 

In the mist of all of this chaos, strangely there seemed to be order as everyone knew where to go and what to do.  I've never seen anything quite like it.  So there we were the only people standing on the side of this very busy road with cars driving very close passed us at about 60km/h all the while it was raining quite heavily.  Every three or so minutes a taxi would stop in front of us and ask if we wanted a lift, Keith just waved his hand to tell them no.  Several different buses went past but we couldn't understand any of the writing on them as to where they were going.  So this went on for about 40 minutes at which point we were soaking wet and ready to give us, and then finally the bus showed up.  The only way we knew it was the right bus was a small picture Keith was going by of what it looked like, the bus just stopped right in mid traffic and let us on board.  I've never been so relived to get onto a bus before.

Picture from the internet but the traffic looked similar to this

Bus Trip to Mysore:

We got onto the bus at about 10:45am and it arrived at Mysore at about 3:00pm, so about a 4 hour bus ride. The bus was very comfortable, not many people onboard, and it had air conditioning which was great to dry off our clothes.

It was incredible seeing all the different things outside the window of the bus.  A few things I picked up on:

• Out of all the hundreds/thousands of people I saw, not one of them was a white European, all of them were Indian
• About 90% of the people I saw was men, of which the majority of them were all wearing very similar clothing (long pants, button up shirt, sandals)
• There were a huge number of trees, overgrown grass/bushes, run-down buildings, stray dogs, random piles of rubbish, small shops selling random stuff, lots of people walking, and motorbikes and taxis everywhere
• The driver of the bus was beeping his horn every 10-15 seconds, and so was everyone else, however it didn’t appear as if they were beeping in an angry way as it would be in New Zealand but more of just letting the car beside them know that they are there.
• Keith pointed out and I did pick up on it but the Indian people are very patient and will happily stop and wait when someone is doing a three point U-turn in the middle of the highway for no particular reason

Picture taken from inside the bus - normal looking street

Mysore:

The bus stopped off at a small shop about an hour before we got to Mysore.  We bought two small packets of cashew biscuits for 20 rupees, which is less than 50 cents, slowing understanding the real value and purchasing power of rupees.  When we finally reached Mysore I was so relieved because I was feeling really sick, tried, and I just wanted off.  The time was now about 3:30pm and we wanted to find a hotel to relax in.  Again having to cross the street with people and cars everywhere, I actually thought I was going to get run over.  A man ran up to us and offered us a taxi, Keith gave them the name of a hotel we wanted to go to and he happily took us there for 100 rupees which was about $2.30 dollars.  The taxi driver said there is a special festival on tonight only and the big palace in Mysore will be lit up at 7pm, so we might go and check that out if we feel up to it.  We booked in for two nights.  It was quite a nice hotel, we had some food in the restaurant upstairs, we both got chicken fried rice - and asked for no chili. I felt a bit better after some nice cold water and cooked food.  There was a huge plate load of food and it only cost 130 rupees which is about $3 dollars and  1 litre of cold bottled drinking water cost 20 rupees which is about 50 cents, but apparently that is more expensive than other places.  I tried to recover with some sleep in the hotel room while Keith went out to try buy a SIM card, but he wasn't able to as apparently it is very difficult for tourists to buy SIM cards due to threat of being able to trigger terrorist attacks.

View from the top of the hotel in Mysore - In the distance is a large Catholic Cathedral 

At around 6:30pm we both went outside together to look around and get some dinner.  It was just starting to get dark and the weather was a quite warm 20 degrees.  We walked up the road for a bit looking at the different shops.  About every 1-2 minutes someone would run up to us and ask if we wanted a taxi or to look in their shop but Keith is quite good with saying no.  A local was telling us there is a big festival on tomorrow called Diwali and all the shops will be closed, a lot of people will be celebrating at a particular mountain with colourful lanterns.  We thought we might check it out tomorrow if we are feeling up to it.  For dinner we both had a plain dosa, large thin rice pancake, it came with two different dipping sauces, one was quite spicy the other was a mild one.  It cost 30 rupees which is about 70 cents.  It filled us up quite easily. Whenever we were walking or even eating there would be several people watching us, ready to ask if they could serve us.  The people seem really nice and approachable, several times I've had people ask me where I was from and they knew of New Zealand.

Tomorrow we spend the day in Mysore relaxing and recovering from the jet lag.