Out There: Mysore

We decided to pay Mysore a visit as we read it was the yoga capital of India and we were both keen to do a few classes and chill out. We had imagined a lovely peaceful village setting and a meeting of yoga folk from around the world. As per our usual India experience though, things turned out to be not what we expected. There were no lush green fields with guitar circles- however did that image get in our heads anyway? Instead, Mysore was yet another busy, bustling, beeping, polluted city. And we couldn’t even find any yoga for the first 24 hours! We arrived in the evening, booking into a hotel which I dubbed the mental asylum. It featured huge lockable gates and a grey concretish block of rooms, with huge bars on all the windows. It was certainly reminiscent of the mental hospital era, right down to the metal trolleys that eerily wheeled down the marble corridors (carrying piles of blankets rather than medical supplies but still). At the front counter sat a man behind bars who handed us a pile of papers to fill in so we could be ‘admitted’ and as we climbed the stairs to our room I couldn’t believe my eyes -a sign on the wall read ‘Please Keep Silent - Do Not Cause Disturbance To Other Inmates'’ I knew it!!!

Anneke was trying not to think about the fact that we were staying in an ex mental asylum and she repeatedly tried to convince me that it was a very old colonial hotel that had fallen into disrepair, and the sign was just some mistranslated English. I SUPPOSE she could have been right… it could have once been an expensive hotel that simply went on operating for decades without maintenance, cleaning or fumigation, yet still tried to retain a semblance of its former glamorous life. This could explain the extended check in process (used to be exclusive and hard to get into), locked gates (to keep the riff raff out) and trolleys (once serving fancy room service food?). Her theory was made stronger by the hilarious moment when a newspaper slid under the mouldy, decaying door at 7am, settling into grime and dust. A newspaper? Really? Do you think perhaps that the cost of delivering a newspaper to every room in the hotel could have been better spent on….a broom? Strange.

On the back of the mouldy decaying door, however, was a very surprising sign…it read: ‘This hotel is a vegetarian hotel and all guests are to refrain from bringing any non-veg items onto the premises’. Wow, impressed! Speaking of vegetarianism, over here they don’t say ‘Are you a vegetarian?’ with a slight rolling of the eyes. Instead they say -‘Do you eat non-veg?’ like ‘non-veg’ is the unusual alternative lifestyle. I even get to roll MY eyes at tourists who lament that there are no meat dishes on the menu! I never thought I would ever say this but it’s so exciting being part of the majority. And, to top it all off, those special ‘non-veg’ restaurants STILL have to have a separate KITCHEN for vegetarian food so as to not contaminate our meals. HOW COOL IS THAT! After spending 6 months in South East Asia trying to pick chicken beaks out of my soup I’m sure you can appreciate the excitement.

Anyway, one big attraction in Mysore is the Palace which, on Sunday evenings gets entirely lit up for an hour. It was absolutely spectacular. The area was buzzing with locals and we stayed for the whole time taking in the atmosphere. It was here that we met our tuk tuk driver who agreed to do some research for us and find the elusive yoga that was supposedly all over the place. He also convinced us to do a ‘city tour’ which we thought would probably be crap but then thought, well, why not. Turns out it wasn’t too bad as far as these things go. Even just gazing out to the streets was exciting. While by now the sights of various animals weaving in and out of traffic was getting a bit blaze, but we were quite surprised to see that all the cows in Mysore were painted bright yellow – apparently due to a cow festival going on at the time. They DO love colour over here! I often joke about people here must think… Why have a plain car/house/wall/dress/doorstep/face/hand/elephant when you can have one covered in colours and patterns? I like this a lot. Our driver took us to a silk making factory which was amazing, especially because we could wander around wherever we liked, and touch everything. We saw a huge room full of filthy old machines that were dripping oil and patched up with bits of paper and wood. Each machine was manned by a rough looking individual in dirty clothes. Yet, the men were all delicately hand looming reams of intricate, patterned silk which emerged without a mark or flaw! Amazing!

The ‘cigarette making factory’, next on the list, proved interesting as well. We were driven to a spot down an alleyway in the part of town where houses were made out of old bits of wood. At the top of a concrete staircase was a room of men, sitting cross legged in silence, moving nothing but their hands which were making tiny little beadie cigarettes with astonishing speed. Apparently they make 2000 a day each. They seemed to find it fascinating that we found them so fascinating. It occurred to me that we don’t usually think about where our products come from and who makes them. As expected, our tour eventually ended with us being ripped off at the tuk tuk drivers friend's incense and oil shop. For some reason, although we kept saying to ourselves - This is the guys friend’s shop, its completely overpriced, we should leave now etc etc. We somehow ended up buying a whole lot of essential oils. I blame the free samples that came accompanied by hand massages. As it turns out, the oil was to come in mighty handy during our 3 day no-shower stay at Kokal Village so it was money well spent.

Later that afternoon, after finally doing a yoga class, we both decided that it wasn’t worth sticking around Mysore just for this. So we planned our departure for Ooty the next morning and entertained ourselves by watching a Bollywood movie with no subtitles (which was actually quite fun).