Sore in Mysore

We left the concrete jungle of Bangalore this weekend for a smaller, more laid back town called Mysore. Mysore is famous for its silk, sandalwood, incense production, some ayurveda schools and a fantastic maharaja palace. It was a nice break for us as the air is much cleaner, there are more open spaces for the children to play, and we stayed at an amazing palace called the Lalitha Mahal. Sadly, my camera ran out of juice, but you can see pictures of this amazing joint here.

We started Saturday going up to the Chamundi Hills to see a 7 story temple. Inside, the temple was busy with visitors trying to achieve a karmic boost and outside, small parades of worshippers walked around. As we lingered behind the parade, we found dozens of monkeys mulling about, as well as cows, goats and dogs. But as we spent more time watching the animals, we realized it wasn't really the animals people were watching, but us! I guess we were quite the novelty as people kept coming up to the kids and pinching their cheeks and asking to have their picture taken with us. At first we thought it was hilarious, but then it became a bit irritating. We must be in about 100 pictures of random Indian's photo collections. I felt sooo Britney Spears. :)

Later in the afternoon, we visited the local zoo where we saw elephants, tigers, hippos, rhinos, a lion, giraffe, chimps, monkeys and a bunch of usual zoo suspects. While the zoo was pretty lush, India remains a place that is harsh for animal lovers. The elephants were chained up and the lion and gorilla appeared malnourished and lonely. The tigers were stuck in pathetically dismal cages -- made me think of our friend, Namita, who would probably sneak in and set them free if she were here.

In the early evening, we walked around a grand palace built for the Maharaja. The palace interior had a kaleidoscope of mirrors, stained glass, sculptures, paintings and carvings. It was pretty remarkable, though quite gaudy. The kids ran out of steam quickly so we fast tracked it back to our hotel.

The hotel appeared very luxurious and was probably the grandest place I had ever stayed. But it was also the loneliest. There were few guests besides us, including one really cool National Geographic photographer (the pictures will be out in a few months). There was an arcade of stores and it was painful to walk near them as people burst out of their chairs to try to make a sale. The highlight for the kids was feeding the monkeys who walked boldly around the premises. And if I can get my little camcorder to work, I'll add the video of the monkeys putting on a porn show with the kids innocently asking, "MOM! what are they DOING!" as I cracked up like a 12 year old.

The food at the hotel sucked and gave the entire family an intestinal situation. :( We were actually glad to come back to Bangalore. There is a great restaurant near our apartment called Sunny's. Inside it's as cosmopolitan as any US bistro and the food is eclectically western: pizza, risotto, salmon teriyaki, crab cakes. The walls boast the owner's golden retriever, Sunny, and the tables buzz with the newly minted upper middle class of Bangalore.