and Mysore it is!

Around 3 pm this Saturday afternoon, I was wondering what was I doing staring at this palace turned museum. It was a flop show, atleast for me. Allow me to take you down my memory lane as to how I reached there and what exactly was I doing there!

11 of us (God, the number is rising day by day!) boarded the 11.55pm passenger to Mysore at Bangalore City Rly St on Friday in the hopes of a great Saturday. An old guy from the nearby compartment tried to make our journey hell by forcing us to sleep and not talk. Now, no one could actually make the 11 of us sleep when all of us were so excited except for the fact that he complained the rly police. :(
While 6 of us did fall asleep the rest 5 didnt. We kept our conversations hushed for what was left of our 4 hour train journey. We even played hushed word building for quite a long time and it was gr8 fun. Seems like we can have fun in the worst of circumstances! :D

A little something happened during the night. We heard beeps. The sound wasnt familiar and the beeps were abrupt and arbit. For some time we ignored it. But it continued and sounded close enough. All of us checked our cell phones. Negative! This wasnt good. The train halted at a station and the beeps stopped instantly. All went quiet and then after a minute it happened again. A single isolated beep! We could have yelled bomb anytime now!!
But then we realised it was actually the cell of one of our sleeping friends beeping because the write message application was open and the cursor was blinking and beeping...
So we reached Mysore at 3.40 am the next day. Man, was it cold! It felt like winter had suddenly arrived without the fair warning of an Autumn and I once again had no shield except coffee. Anyways, we decided to wait for the sun at the station itself and sat down on the platform and played cards for about an hour. And guess what! to prevent cards from getting blown away we kept cards in a book and passed along. Jugaad! thats what we are great at :P

We set out for Chamundu hills and reached there at 6 only to find that the temple opens at 7.30
Now with nowhere to sit (and play cards) we started roaming around on our own, took few pics of the beautiful landscape views. The dense fog played spoilsport. The wind was freezening our bones. We finally queued up for the temple at 7.30. The atmo inside was so comforting. Bhajans were playing on stereos at just the right volume and sweet fragrances filled our nostrils. It felt really good.

After breaker, we went to the Karanji lake. This time I decided NOT to go boating. The weather had mildened by then. Walked through an amazing aviary at that place. Even white peacocks exist btw.
Another incident happened there. Few of the tree leaves caught spark and even the electrical wires short circuited. It was quite a blast. Scared us! Thank god it didnt turn into a forest fire. Second accident averted in the day..LOL at that..
The next stop was the zoo. The animals were sprawled across a 3.5 km long walk. Was a nice experience. But a tiring one. Anyways after that we went to the Mysore palace. It was beautifullt built but due to lack of energy we couldn't enjoy it. After the 1st palace we decided to skip the second one and sat down to play cards only to be asked to quit by a security personnel.

Then we had lunch. This was good. The food was quite satisfying, though expensive. Now we desperately needed sleep. It was also raining. So we headed for Srirangapatnam hoping the long drive would give us some rest and the rain would stop as well. Well neither happened. The drive wasnt long enough. And so we were in front of the Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace-turned-museum. As I said earlier, it was a flop show.

After that we retreated to a water shed nearby. This was the best place to be although did not look very attractive at first. Dipping your feet under water after a tiring day and poor weather could be so refreshing! We climbed into the water and onto the rocks and sat there rejuvenating ourselves..

Our last stop for the day were the beautiful Brindavan Gardens. Well maintained trees, shrubs, water fountains, artificial water falls, lightening...it has them all. The musical fountain was also worth seeing. Awesome!!!

Mysore was fun except for Srirangapatnam and we took infinite pics this time...and I mean it when I say infinite...over 300 in a single day!