Mysore arse and head

Mysore arse and head
At 00:34 this morning two things became very clear to me. The first is that I am feeling better after my brief but intense bout of the cold/ respiratory distress, the second is that it is time to leave this Hotel. The noise has finally eroded my extra tough, specially enamelled India patience coated skin and I angrily made my way to the car park at 00:34 and told the driver of the offending Tata 4x4 that if he repositioned it by one further millimetre, I would ram the whole vehicle where the sun does not shine.

Yes extreme I hear you cry, unreasonable too, he was only manoeuvring his vehicle back and forth forty times to take the least amount of space, leave the bloke alone you grumpy old sod. Well normally I would agree, but this is India where there is more bling than Italy and nothing is worth owning if it does not beep in a thousand annoying different ways.

While reversing the populace realised, it was too quiet. They are too busy turning their heads to hit the horn at random intervals for random reasons as they do while travelling forwards so, to redress the balance now fit their cars with the automotive equivalent of personalised ringtones, which are activated when the car moves into reverse and in some cases especially bikes, when the indicator is on.

“Sensible” I hear you cry valiantly defending a good solid idea, in Europe trucks and lorries go beep when they reverse and again were this not India I would agree, the problem is the volume. This is not a well thought out dB level, loud enough to be noticeable enough in a busy street, not loud enough to induce bleeding from the ears as it is here.
So Im off somewhere else, the Youth Hostel and Green Hotel are both out of town. I should have left before now but as Ive been feeling that shitty with my ringing ears, blocked nose and phlegm regurgitation, I couldnt be bothered to move.


This fabulous sign was the first thing that got my attention when I arrived.

Mysore has been pretty mixed, certainly having no respite from the noise has spoiled my stay a little, the architecture of the palace is wonderful and completely missed by the locals who stampede through like a heard of thirsty bison heading for a water hole, paying little or no attention to the place at all, unless they see “foreigner” as I am currently denominated.
I have had other names, one of my favourites was HelloHash, see the Bombay entries, if your bored enough to know why.



The Devaraja market is impressive and is certainly the most comprehensive Ive seen, but I would not go out of my way to see it. I would say the best thing here is the Tiger restaurant at the Metripole Hotel, the staff were fabulous as was the food, the grilled fish was just outstanding.


I didnt enjoy my Zoo visit, the mixture of Indians and a Zoo made the experience even less bearable than it usually is. The have a beautiful white Tiger here and I was nearly driven crazy by the desire to let it out to eat all the idiots clicking, whistling, banging the cage bars and anything else they could think of to provoke the magnificent beast.

The rest of the town is pretty mixed, I visited my first Tourist Info and it was a complete waste of time, the Human life museum was quite interesting and a good idea, upstairs in the gallery I was quite surprised and impressed by the quality and style of a couple of the modern pieces, this is India though and the canvas of three or four of those on display was torn, ripped or punctured!

This is my best picture of a fence ever.

Ive decided to try and visit two of the Nature reserve areas, one as its got a wash the elephant thing and there is a place with a botanist and the hills are covered in coffee, pepper and cardamom plantations. The second place Ooty, is up a mountain and as Im here on a mountain bike, how can I resist, its cold too which will be interesting.