Mysore

We are really happy to have decided to stop in Udupi to cut the travelling time short. We left Udupi by bus around 11h30 and it is supposed to arrive at destination around 18h. We did stop a lot for 5 minutes at a time and the road is under construction for quite a distance. On top of that, we had to drive across the region of Kodagu where the road is pretty narrow and goes up and down mountains with ravines lining the side of the road. It becomes dangerous to pass other cars and so we stayed behind tractors for a while. The landscapes are awesome though! We got to Mysore 4 hours late. We are starving after having skipped lunch and dinner. We finally found a rooftop restaurant to eat something before crashing into bed. The food is awful, but full of tourists. I guess the view of part of Mysore was pretty good.


This city is descibed as flamboyant in the guide book and it has many palaces. The oldest one, Jayachamarajendra, is now a art gallery. It is notvery impressive when compared to the newer palace, the Maharaja’s Palace. Very impressive! There is so many people there with groups of students. One of them has Micheal Jackson’s look with a leather jacket and 2 others are wearing what looks like winter jackets, to be stylished we assumed since it is 30 degrees! We also walked through the city markets, one that they called the old market and the other which is much bigger, the Devaraja. There are so many stands selling exactly the same things. Flowers for the offerings in temples, fruits, vegetebles, colored powders, essential oils (?) and eggs. How can they make money when there is so much competition? We had an excellent Thalli served on banana leaves. Portion of rice with oil and spices, a bit of lentils, vegetables, pieces of fried cheese (???) and few hot peppers. We have to mix whatever we want with the rice and squeeze the rice between your fingers to eat it. Delicious!

Mysore is also where we witnessed a street fight. There are 2 women and 4 guys. The victim is wearing a beige shirt (Mr.B). The first thing we saw was Mr. B laying on the ground after one of the guy stamps its foot in Mr. B’s face. Mr.B gets up and he received a fist in the face, on the temple and in the belly from the guys. There is about 5 secondes in between each hit and it is weird that Mr.B don’t make any move to protect himself. One of the woman is screaming and she slapped him pretty hard. Yeah! The police is coming! Oupss, it looks like the policeman is running after the woman who hit the guy and he is slashing her back with a 4 feet-long stick. She disappeared finally and the policeman turned towards Mr. B that hasn’t reacted yet. Mr. B got got the stick treatment a few times before he starts running away with the other woman. It is the best way to end a fight!