Mysore – a city of many colours

Another night train pretty much due south down to Mysore – Gabriel has now officially progressed from monkey to gibbon in terms of swinging and jumping between the bunks.

After deciding to come to Mysore, we discovered that we would be just in time to catch the finale of the 10-day Nasara festival, which is the official state festival for Karnataka, so a huge event. Although that’s obviously an exciting prospect, it means that all the hotels in Mysore are fully booked. However, Fi has been weaving her magic and managed to find an apartment that’s a couple of kilometres out of town. Not only that, in typical style she has spoken to someone who knows someone who will help us in terms of seeing some of the festival activities. This time his name is Sayeed. He meets us at the station and arranges for his trusty tuk-tuk driver Javeed to pick us up later for the main festival procession.

It’s inconceivable that what Sayeed has arranged for us could be achieved for a major event in London, with just a day or so’s notice. We’ve got plastic seats reserved for us on a raised up balcony, right at the end of the procession route. We can see right over the heads of the 6-deep throng that’s gathering right up against the roadside; plus we’re in the shade – perfect! After an hour or so’s wait, with the crowd continuing to swell, we see the procession arriving. Look – it’s led by two ornately decorated elephants, with equally spectacular mahouts, followed by drummers and dancers – fabulous! It’s a riot of colour and noise as floats pass by, separated by dancers (with headdresses and swords) bands and drummers. It’s a magnificent spectacle!

After about an hour, the children are predictably starting to get a bit bored – you can have too much of a good thing – so we decide to leave early, so their memories are of excitement rather than boredom and frustration. However, this is easier said than done – the only way out is absolutely rammed with spectators. On my own, I would have gone for it, but not with children – the crush was scary. We turn back but then see a couple of policemen going the way we want to go – we decide to have another go, but just a couple of yards in we decide it’s just too dangerous (Hillsborough pops briefly into my head) and we abort the mission.  We’ve lost our seats by now, but thankfully I’m about a head taller than most Indians and with some shoulder carrying, standing on chairs and help from the locals to get children back onto the balcony, we all manage to get a view. Another fabulously decorated elephant brings up the rear, with a throne that’s made of gold and weighs 750kg apparently! Wow!

Immediately it’s over, the crowds spills into the street to disperse – where has the crowd control gone? But wait… the elephant has gone around the roundabout and is now coming back down the road, against the inexorable flow of the crowd! How on earth no-one is trampled by the elephant I cannot imagine. For a second time, Hillsborough springs to mind.

When the initial surge of the crowd has eased off, we walk to a nearby restaurant with a garden – a pleasant enough environment and good food but unbelievably we’re the only people there! If you don’t have punters immediately after the finale of the biggest procession of the year that passes at the bottom of your road, what chance do you have?

In the evening we go to visit the palace that’s lit up, probably consuming the same amount of electricity as the whole of Richmond Borough at half time in the World Cup final. It’s extraordinary and again, there are heaving crowds of people.  It’s impressive, but later we are reminded that this was built by an extraordinarily wealthy Maharaja for his pleasure, while outside people were dying of poverty on the streets – quite a sobering thought. It’s a common theme here in India, but once again there is litter absolutely everywhere. We treat the kids to candy floss but there are no bins in which to dispose of our rubbish – we have no option but to add to the continuous pile of of detritus lining the road. We feel bad.

We drive for a couple of hours to visit an elephant sanctuary – unfortunately we arrive to discover that the elephant washing only happens in the mornings and that the sanctuary across the river is closed from midday until 4.30pm (you can guess what time it is). The day is looking like a total washout but we decided to wait. Thankfully it was not in vain – the children got to feed and sit on the elephants – again, I’ll refer you to their blogs for more details.

Sayeed suggests we go for a day out to a local ‘waterfall’ where we can swim. It turns out to be a very popular spot with the locals, while they’re still on holiday after the big festival. It’s actually a weir, with people jumping in on the upstream side and relaxing in the river on the downstream side. We’re there with Theresia, another guest of Sayeed – she’s Austrian, spending 3 months volunteering in an orphanage near Bangalore. To say we’re a novelty with the 90% male, alcohol fuelled throng would be an understatement! They are impressed that Jemima is happy to jump off a wall a couple of metres high into the water, though.

We really like Mysore – it’s a lively town (especially at this time of year) and just easy to be in. I could even imagine living here for a while. It has an fabulous market – again it’s a riot of colour with fruit, vegetables, spices, powder paints in the most vivid colours and an unimaginable number of flowers being threaded into garlands. It’s one of the most colourful markets I’ve ever seen.

We were only going to stay a couple of nights, but again that gets stretched into five. It’s lovely to stay somewhere long enough to get a real sense of knowing your way a round the town. Sayeed is expert in sending us off to see his ‘friends’ who invariably sell various wares. We get a bit carried away in a silk and traditional craft emporium (another package back to the UK) and in buying various essential oils from another ‘friend’. (We are warned that the oils on sale in the market are all fakes but in hindsight we have a feeling that the friend’s product may not be altogether authentic!)

Eventually we decide to move on, with fond memories of Mysore. Now it’s off for some wildlife action…