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Other entries in Mysore

Palaces and the paparazzi

Peter and I spent yesterday and today touring around Mysore, a few hours drive from Bangalore.  Mysore is home to loads of temples and palaces, chief among them the Maharaja's palace.  It's a really ornate structure filed with gold, ivory, stained glass, and marble.  We couldn't take any pictures inside, but you get the idea of the extravagance of this place from even the outdoor pictures (see below).  The palace was great, but the funniest part about this place was how the Indian visitors kept coming up to us and asking to have their picture taken with us.  We can only speculate that people want to show off their American "friends."  I even caught a couple of people video taping us.  People, the PALACE is supposed to be the attraction, not us boring tourists!  Instead of getting uncomfortable with it, we decided to pretend like we were celebrities trying to escape the paparazzi J.  One guidebook actually warns women against letting people take their picture as the faces of women travelers have reportedly been pasted on nude bodies on the internet.  Sounds like the excuse of a lamenting former porn star to me though. 

We also went up to this temple sitting on top of Chamundi Hill overlooking the city.  Worshippers were climbing more than 10 kilometers to the temple - I am repeatedly amazed at how much religion is entwined in every day life here.  There was some kind of festival, so it was especially busy today.  Merchants were selling floral arrangements, bananas, and jasmine to be offered to the gods while worshippers lined up at the temple hours before it opened.  They even have gates set up like at amusements parks to offer some organization to the lines.  Meanwhile, all sorts of animals - monkeys, cows, goats, and chickens - wandered about grazing on scraps and edible offerings.  We watched the two monkeys gorge themselves on bunches of bananas left by the temple-goers. 

We stayed in an old palace of the Maharaja that has been converted into a hotel.  Each room had a different theme and I stayed in the "Bollywood Room" which was decorated with relics from, well, old Bollywood.  Tomorrow we will head another few hours away to a national park to go on a jungle safari. 

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