Our trip from Mumbai to Bengaluru went without any incident, apart from a bit of confusion from myself with the various security check points and the strange separation of men and women for our hand luggage scanning (well strange for us). Overall the flight to Bengaluru (Bangalore) was good, it was a short flight and we arrived on time. The airport was also modern and clean which was a good start. We had arranged a driver from the airport to drop us off at the hotel.

 

Yet again, traffic by the airport was good with wide lane highways but as soon as we got closer to the city it descended into chaos. There were cars driving against traffic or driving on the limited pavements but somehow traffic flowed, it reminded me to a colony on ants who appear chaotic in their direction but actually always seem to manage to get where they want.

After about an hour in the car we arrived to the hotel, it was a small house essentially situated in a relatively quiet side road. We were situated a short walk from the main town. Once we arrived we checked in and took to our room, we had apparently been upgraded to a better room but to be honest it still looked pretty basic to me but perhaps I am a bit snobby or not used to Indian standards. Izaskun liked the place but I thought it was ok. The hotel was essentially a house that was transformed into a hotel, so there were other residential houses situated around it. This meant we could hear the neighbours cooking or their kids crying, which happened pretty much the entire time while we were there. Overall the hotel was pretty good thou, there was a hippy vibe to it and the staff were mostly nice.

We had originally booked two nights but after exploring the town a bit, which consisted of a small colonial area and some interesting gardens. We also had the experience of even worse traffic. So we decided that we should cut the stay short by a day as we thought there wasn’t much to see. The hotel didn’t accept us to cancel our second night so I managed to convince them to only charge us half the price. I am not sure if they were just being difficult, greedy or actually kind. Anyways, luckily hotels were not too expensive so it was about £20 extra.

 

We decided to take the train to Mysore, which was about a 3-hour train ride. Trains in India are famous and of course we received much recommendations to take 1^st or 2^nd class. We looked up the times and found that no trains that we wanted to Mysore had 1^st or 2^nd class unless we travelled later in the afternoon but of course we wanted to travel in the morning to ensure we get a full day in Mysore. We looked on the notice board at the hotel for trains and found that the same train (each train has a unique code) had different information about depending on where you looked at it, the sources we looked at were the notice board, Internet and a booklet. In the end we decided to go with the information on the Internet.

 

The next challenge was actually booking train tickets, I’ve never had such a difficult time in buying train tickets. Essentially what I discovered was that all train tickets, regardless if you going through an agent, force you to register and purchase tickets through the government’s website (this makes me ask what the agents really do in this apart from having prettier websites). This wouldn’t be so bad but as part of the registration process you need to have your email address verified as well as your mobile number, however only Indian mobile numbers are accepted. I tried faking the number but they require you to enter a verification code that is sent via SMS in order to continue. This is pretty annoying for foreigners. Luckily Izaskun had a friend who was wiling to help, so in the end we managed. So finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel the website eventually says that the tickets cannot be bought online and we will need to buy them on the day. So essentially a few hours wasted.

 

The next morning we work up earlier in order to eat our complementary breakfast of toast and coffee, which was fine with us as we don’t really eat breakfast, and to catch the train. We planning to catch the 10:30am train but during breakfast ay 9am the staff member informed that the other couple (another couple were planning to take the train, something apparently quite rare) had already left to the train station. So we decided to step it up a notch and get to the train station. The staff member managed to pull over an auto-rickshaw (aka Tuk Tuk) and communicate with the driver that we wanted to go to the train station. We agreed on the price of 120 rupees and off we went into the maze of traffic.

In about 40 minutes we had arrived and we looked for the ticket office, luckily it was not too busy and we proceeded to enquire around the train times and prices. The train we wanted was on schedule and only cost 60 Rupees (about 6 pence), something that amazed us (coming from London) on how cheap trains were. We were then a bit worried about what we’ve committed ourselves to as we didn’t really believe that 60 Rupees could buy a decent train trip but we decided to stick it out and see what was in store, worse case we can take another train. So we decided to buy the tickets and asked where the train was leaving. After a few minutes we think we found the platform but of course this was our first train trip we wanted to make sure we were boarding the correct train.

We asked some people around but no-one spoke English but someone did tell us to speak to the police, which we weren’t too keen on as there were quite a few people in the mini police station.

However, eventually we managed to confirm the correct train and we waited for the train to leave. We managed to grab a group of seats, fortunately the train was pretty empty. The few passengers who were present were probably a bit surprised to see white people traveling in ‘normal’ conditions (i.e. no reserved seats and no air-con). We waited patiently – slightly worried that we had the incorrect time, however the train left about 5 minutes late from the proposed departure time. Not too bad.

For the next 3 and a half hours we were entertained by the various sights and smells of going across the country. We also had a bit of interest around the various waves of sellers and beggars who roam the aisles after each stop. The sellers that wandered we didn’t have any idea what they were selling, clearly local food and snacks but nothing like we had seen before. The beggars were also exotic but seemed to also follow a strange hierarchy or order in when they arrive. First it was sales which includes the food (no drinks for some reason) then there was ‘standard’ beggars, then what appeared to be men dressed in women clothing. When they entered the carriage they would clap. We were told later that they are not necessary selling anything but there are superstitious people who believe that if a ‘cross dressers’ can curse you if they swear at you, so essentially people pay to be on their good side. After this the crippled beggars enter who often touch you to get your attention but overall luckily no group of people are aggressive or pushy.

After about 3.5 hours we started slowing down and people were starting to stand and get ready to depart. We weren’t sure whether this was our stop but at least I could lean out the door to see what was going on. Looked good and eventually we stopped and we were ready to depart. We had arrived in Mysore.

Getting off the train was a bit of chaos due to the crowds simply pushing through and the massive crowd, there is a different concept of personal space as we managed to discover. After navigating the train station and decline the many taxi requests (perhaps they know we need a taxi if I am white and blonde), we decided to walk away from the station pretending we knew where we were going. Luckily I had downloaded the offline map on my Google Maps app on my phone, so we used that to track where we were going.

After a few minutes walking in the heat with our heavy backpacks we decided to get an auto-rickshaw, which was relatively simple. We negotiated 50 Rupees for the trip to the holiday, dumped our bags onboard and departed. The trip was about 15 minutes.  Fortunately we had arrived pretty early to Mysore, which meant we could get to the hotel and start seeing the town. We decided to only stay one night in Mysore as we thought there wasn’t much to see apart from the palace. So arriving to the hotel we checked in, dropped off our bags and proceeded to the palace. Luckily we were pretty close to it where we could walk directly to it.

It was hot and of course, we didn’t know where to go entirely. We knew where the palace was but what is not clear is which entrance we should be aiming for, being a palace the complex is large and there are no signs indicating where to get in. After much walking with the heavy cameras and being harassed by people for money or rides on the auto-rickshaws we eventually found the entrance. Strangely the entrance is on the side which misses the majestic grand entrance (or the original entrance).

 

We proceeded to explore the palace after figuring out that we cannot enter with shoes on. We started with the main building and proceeded to follow a pre-determined path that everyone has to follow. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed cameras inside, sorry we don’t have any photos to share.

 

 

After seeing the inside of the palace we proceeded to explore the complex, directly behind the palace were two Hindu temples and a small space for two elephants to walk around with people on them. Having seen this we proceeded to exit, with a shy moment of some girls wanting to get a photo with Izaskun. I am guessing they never seen a pale skin like us 🙂

After the palace we decided to find a supermarket to get some food, however this turned into a real mission. We needed up walking across the town in the hopes of finding one. Luckily by chance we eventually found one which turned out to be pretty good.

Walking home we were pretty exhausted and ready to retire for the day, it was getting dark and it seemed the traffic was picking up, which was probably due to rush hour starting. On the way home we encountered a strange phenomena where someone on the street randomly shouted at me “You Russian….. You go to Goa!”. I just ignored it, but I found the incident very amusing. Izaskun wasn’t so impressed but then again it was pretty random that we didn’t know what to do.

That evening we organised the driver for the next day, we were going to going to drive across the country to a nature reserve on the borders of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (where we were in currently). In the meantime we will try to get a good night’s sleep.