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| Mysore Spice Market |
Leaving Bangalore after the wedding I was
probably not in the soundest of minds to attempt my first non-AC carriage
train ride. For a start there are no designated seats, after you purchase your
ticket it is every man, woman and child for themselves. And believe me they
know it. There were two stairways down to the platform but one of which had
collapsed about five feet from the bottom. Not keen on making the jump down
onto a bed of jagged rubble with all my bags, I decided to cue to use the other
stairway like a civilised person. Unfortunately civilisation seems to have
skipped India in certain places. Instead of people lining up to go down, a writhing,
wriggling ball had formed at the top of the stairs. Men pushed kids and all out
of their way, feeble protests drowned out by the shouting they were doing into
the mobile phone glued to their ear. Women indiscriminately swung the big burlap
sacks balanced on their heads like wrecking balls to clear a path in front of them.
I almost felt sorry for the kids being pinballed about and trampled underfoot
until one of them accidentally/on purpose kicked me in the shins trying to get
past. As the momentum surged backward and forward I was lifted me off
my feet on more than one occasion by the flood of people on the stairs. And of course all hell
broke lose when the unstoppable force of people going down met the immovable
objects of people trying to get back up.
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| Street Cricket |
The compartments of the train were laid out
with two benches of four facing each other and two luggage racks running
parallel overhead. An aisle ran between those benches and the two further single
seats that faced each other. It could have fitted fourteen comfortably, maybe
eighteen at a stretch but certainly not the thirty people who piled in on top
of me. I was pushed closer and closer to the window until I had to open it just
so that half my body could lean out. Kids were standing between my legs, guys
climbed onto the luggage rack to sleep on top of my bags and about six people
squeezed onto the edge of my seat in a perverse game of tetras. That was before
the water sellers and other vendors pushed in, adding to the discordance of
noise with their own bellows of prices. But once you got used to the clammy
claustrophobic press of bodies it was actually quite an interesting experience.
The views were spectacular as we cut through part jungle part pastureland and
there was no shortage of wildlife to look at. The kids played games to pass the
time and even though I had no idea what they were saying their squeals of joy
were infectious. Once the train started moving, wind streamed in through the
window grills to cool the cabin down until it was quite pleasant. And at 75p
for a four-hour ride it was easy to put any discomforts aside.
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| Magnificent Mysore |
My next stop was Mysore, a city famous for
its palace, its handicraft and its dhosa. Keen to see all three I went to the
Palace first. It was a huge royal complex and is rated as one
of the finest in India. The old wooden structure of the palace had burned down
during a feast but the new stone building built in its place at the turn of the
20th Century was lavishly restored with no expense spared. I took an
audio tour of the place, which offered a trove of information to match the
treasures on display. Unlike some of the other tours I have done it didn’t getting
bogged down in complex genealogy trees that would require a pen and paper to even begin to follow. Packed with an amazing assortment of antiques from pre-Colonial
and Colonial times, there was something to see in each room. The highlight was
definitely the Durbar Hall used to hold court. True to the divisive customs at
the time, every caste and gender had their own position in the room. The Raj’s
throne was centre, with his closest nobles and advisors placed beside him
according to rank, a gallery for guests and invited dignitaries and a balcony
for the royal women. Through the pillars that supported the roof the front was
completely open to the parade ground where common people stood to observe proceedings.
In the vast grounds of the palace there were a number of temples and other
buildings previously used by the royalty and it took the best part of the
morning to see it all.
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| The Durbar Hall |
On the way out, a local struck up a
conversation with me and decided he was going to take me on an impromptu tour
of “the part of Mysore that isn’t in your travel guide.” First we went to a
market used pretty exclusively by locals and packed with bowls of spices, bags
of vegetables and ghastly hooks hanging sheep and chicken. The stench from the
slaughter yard was pretty overpowering but I could help but stare with grim
intrigue as the butchers expertly hacked them down sizeable into chunks for
customers.
After that we were on to slightly more
pleasant odours when he took me to the incense and oil shop. Here I watched a
woman rolling sticks through a mixture of charcoal, sawdust, water and oils.
These were left to dry in the sun for a couple of hours before being coated in
their fragrance powders. She would roll 7,000 of them a day by hand, sitting in
that room, making rolling cutlery back home in the Wellie look like a gift. The oils were all natural remedies that would
do everything from clearing asthma, to ridding of rashes, to improving your
sexual performance. They were adamant that their water lily oil would stave off
mosquitos for up to ten hours and was a lot better for your skin than Western
DEET based repellents. But after a night of getting terrorized by mosquitos I
think my tasty Irish blood must have ben just too tantalising.
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| Tabletops |
The last workshop I visited was definitely
the most amazing, with Mysore’s carpenters renowned throughout India. They
showed me the whole process starting with a plain tabletop and cutting out the
designs using a stencil. They do not use any paint throughout the entire
process but instead build the inlays through different types of wood. The
different wood types provided the full palette of colours they needed for their
designs. These were painstakingly carved and sealed into the tabletop. Next the
whole table is sanded down and varnished. Then legs are intricately carved and
fitted following a similar method. Overall it can take the team of ten men up
to a year to make one of the larger banquet tables and would cost in the region
of ten to twelve thousand euros. They have quite a long waiting list so get
your orders in now!
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| Dhosa |
The dhosa in Mysore is famous in southern
India for its authenticity, with some of the restaurants dating back a couple
centuries. Slathered in ghee (Indian lard) it had the greasy feel of a good
takeaway. The restaurant had five tables of four but each seat was filled. As
soon as someone stood to leave another took his place. The waiter came out with
an endless stream of the savoury crepe like pancakes and dished them out to
whoever had an empty plate. Dhosa after dhosa, until I too could take no more
and was replaced at the table by the next guy.
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| Con |
The evenings in Mysore were mostly spent
chilling on the hostel rooftop with the owners looking out over the city. The
Zostel guys gave me a great tip for my next destination, Bandipur National
Park, as well. Rather than pay £25 for a 4x4 to take me on a two-hour tour they
told me to stay overnight with a local at a converted hunting lodge for £7.50 a
night. The owner had built his own watchtower and from there you had as good a
chance as any to see the wildlife up close. On the way there two police
officers flagged down our bus and got on with a third man. The two police
officers sat down while the third man remained sheepishly standing. My exact
thoughts were could he be? No surely he wasn’t a prisoner, who in their right
mind would bring an arrested person on to a public bus. But before I could
begin to admonish myself for being so silly, one of the police officers reached
over and opened the other man’s previously concealed handcuffs and then the man
himself cuffed them to the rail overhead. Certainly one way to balance the books on the policing bill back home!
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| Unwanted Hitchhiker |
The bus I had taken was actually the main
bus ride between Mysore and Ooty, two big towns in the south of India. The
incredible part was for forty-five minute of the journey it runs through the
national park. So people on their ever day work commute will drive past a
plethora of peacocks, a deluge of deer and manic monkeys stealing food from
anywhere they could get it. At the checkpoint
between Karnataka and Tamil land, an unfortunate truck driver was unaware that
a monkey who had climbed on top was pilfering his cargo of onions. Eating his
fill and throwing the odd piece down to the waiting troop when he needed a breather.
The buses were quite old fashioned, rickety, metallic contraptions. People were
packed into them like the proverbial tin of sardines only I think that tin
would have had a better suspension system.
The first day at the lodge I saw pretty
much everything from the watchtower that overlooked a small manmade waterhole;
wild boars bathing, more monkeys cavorting, stags charging and clashing heads. A peacock
spread its feathers in a majestic display of defiance to ward of an approaching
mongoose. It looked so regal and brave, but then ruined the moment when it flew
(did not know they could do that) to a tree branch. The long wedding dress of
plumage it carried behind it was so ungainly that it looked unbalanced in the
air. This time more drunkenly majestic, like your friend at the end of the
night falling over but managing to keep his kebab intact.
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| Watchtower view with boar and deer |
At night as I watched a biblical
thunderstorm play out in the towering mountains nearby the hostel owner joined
me. He was an elderly man and had been working there since he was a boy and when it was still a
hunting lodge favoured by British hunting parties, a very different set up to
the eco-tourist business he ran now. I had really wanted to see a wild elephant
or tusker as he called them, as so far I had only seen work elephants in India, always chained up whether it was for tourism or heavy labour. The next morning the owner delivered and
one of the workers jumped me on to his bike. We sped off into the jungle in
search of an elephant that had been spotted there earlier. I had heard before that Indian elephants where very aggressive when compared to their African cousins. They were known to have trampled tourist vehicles and now long trenches had been dug between the road and the bush to offer some protection, but the driver told me if the elephant wanted you bad enough it would still get you. We searched for
twenty five minutes before he pulled the bike in and killed the engine. Walkeing back a hundred yards up the road he pointed through some branches. And there it was across the safety ditch but no more than fifty yards
away. A big bull elephant busily stuffing a half shredded plant into its mouth, the powerful shoulders were haunched as if it was ready to spring off at a moments notice. Its head was down while it chewed but as soon as I took out my camera it paused eating. Whether it could see me or not or merely decided I was no immediate threat
it went back to the task at hand. We sat for half an hour or so watching him eat his fill before he moved off deeper into the bush and I was still exhilarated after as we rode back to the lodge.
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| Wild Elephant v Work Elephant |
The only downside were the local tourists
at the lodge. Most of them didn’t appear to have any interest in seeing any wildlife, instead most of them seemed to want to be seen seeing wildlife. They spent most of
their time in the watchtower taking selfies, answering phone calls or playing
music off their phone. They talked loud enough they could have been heard back
in Mysore and certainly loud enough to scare away any animals. With me the gora or
foreigner, I was sadly more exotic to them than any tiger or leopard ever would
be. While I was sitting there they would try to ask me every question from
favourite colour to what my star sign was. Part and parcel of coming to India for sure and each day I'm definitely now waving at more random people than the Pope and Queen combined, but when out to see wildlife it does start to grate. Realising I wouldn’t see any more
with them there I organised for a 4x4 to take me back to the bus stop. If I
expected any difference here I was sorely mistaken as we ricocheted our way
from pothole to speed bump. These drivers are employed to work in the national park but instead they drive like they are rallying on the Isle of Man. He used his horn in place of his brake for every blind corner, meaning we were more likely to hit a wild animal than see one on the way back!
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| Gulmohur/Peacock Flower Tree |
