October 19, 2007
Smack, bang in the middle of Mysore is a majestic old palace. It's the main tourist attraction in the city, and so it was for us today. But not before clearing some, almost endearingly classic, travel hurdles. We scrambled through traffic with some frantic head spinning and animated speed-walking. And then, walked around three sides of the palace complex before locating where visitors enter, dodged some jewelry and postcard touts with some side-stepping moves and paid the special foreigner entrance fee. And, yes, I felt special.
Inside, no cameras are allowed and, unusually, must be dropped off at the purpose built shack, where an expressionless man tosses them in a conical pile that must be his clever sort of filing system. Out of curiosity, I asked about camera phones and found out that these can be taken in, if switched off. (About a month ago, an Italian friend showed me a phone, which takes high-quality pictures at a resolution similar to a full sized camera, the thought of which made me smirk. Policies will never catch up with technology.)
Then we parted with our shoes--dropping them off at an open air rack--thus ensuring that the thousands of people walking through the palace every day keep the Public Health Department busy and ever expanding. Now don't get me wrong, I completely understand wanting to keep inside spaces clean, but the floor inside the palace was filthy. And, at one point, the tourist route leads outside the palace and into a temple. The connecting road is shared with cars, elephants and camels. (The animals were for children to take "Joy Rides!") Painfully, the road was littered with stones and other things not unexpected, like the things that usually drop from camels. We hobbled along with all the rest.
All in all, I'm glad to have gone to the palace; it had many beautiful things. Emerald colored glass plates with elaborate patterns formed a couple of the ceilings. A golden throne, statues, pillars and the carved doors were amazing. Inside the temples were various deities caged in nooks and a friendly holy man, who blessed each of us by turning a silver bowl upside down over our heads and sayings a few words. Outside there were gardens, towers, temples and more picturesque views.
But, as soon as we left, don't you know we made a bee-line for the hotel to wash and soak our feet.
