1N/2D getaway from Bengaluru to Mysore

It was that time again for a quick 2D/1N getaway. We picked Mysore as our destination as there were couple of place/things that we had not seen/done in our earlier visits to Mysore despite visiting Mysore some 25-30 times since childhood. Count is more for Viji with her 2 yrs Manasa Gangothri stay during her Grad school days. Lucky for us, found a nice offer for Rs. 4300.00 /night with breakfast for 2, in none other than the heritage hotel “Metroplole” (now owned by Royal Orchid group). Thanks to Groupon.co.in again! Booked a one way bus tickets in KSTRC Airawat for the next day Dec 4th and off we went! Had a pleasant surprise when we reached the bus stand, a free upgrade to Club Class bus to Mysore which left sort of on time (Just 10min late :-) at 8:15AM). Reached Mysore by 11:00.                                                                                                    

Metropole

Headed straight to the Hotel in a rick after checking few of them to ensure we get on the one with the meter on. Reached Metropole hotel in no time & it looked almost the same as it was some 22yrs ago, when we had stayed here. It has some modifications now. Built in 1920 by the Maharaja as a guest house for his British visitors, this heritage hotel has retained all its antique furnitures & ambience. After taking a quick look of the hotel campus we had lunch at their Tiger

Metropole Cafe

Trail restaurant (which is, by the way, among the Top 10 Restaurants in Mysore by Lonely Planet). It was delicious! We made our sightseeing plans, decided to go to Kaveri backwaters that evening to enjoy the sunset from there & visit Venugopala Swamy temple and next day to climb 1000+ steps to Chamundi temple to  see the sunrise & later visit couple of museums before heading back to Bangalore.

Kaveri Backwater

The Kaveri backwater is 7 km from KRS/Brindavan Gardens & about 25 km from this hotel. We booked ½ day taxi with the help of our hotel reception. We left at 4:00 PM and reached Kaveri backwaters around 4:40 PM after having to ask for directions from locals after reaching Brindavan Garden bridge as our driver (who is from Mysore) was new to his job & had not even heard of this backwaters or Hosa Kannambadi village and here I was thinking, how come we did not know about backwaters till couple of years ago :-). It is a beautiful place! I understand till recently the last 1 km stretch to the backwaters was by “foot"only as this was through farm land, but now thanks to Venugopala Swamy temple’s restoration work, there is a proper road all the way to the backwaters. On the bank of the backwater is this wonderful temple. Although almost a year away from completion, it is amazing and huge! Here is the interesting history of the temple 

Venugopalaswamy temple

“When the KRS dam was conceived in 1909, the Venugopalaswamy temple in Kannambadi village was going to be submerged. The main idol was shifted to a new temple. By 1930 this huge temple complex was completely buried underwater with most of its idols. However, the temple would resurface whenever the water levels in the reservoir dropped, typically during drought years. This was most evident around the year 2000. For more than 70 years the temple lay underwater, when in 2004 the Khoday Foundation under the guidance of liquor baron and philanthropist Mr. Sri Hari Khoday took up the task of relocating and restoring the temple to Hosa Kannambadi. The new site is about one km to the north of the original site; the backwaters would touch the outer walls of the temple if the water level of the KRS touched 124.80 ft, its maximum capacity. The in-house architects of the group had shot the original temple on video, taken over 16,000 photographs, and marked each and every slab used in the construction of the original temple. Each and every temple stone was removed and reconstructed at Hosa Kannambadi with trained artisans and sculptors, with half a dozen experts from Tamil Nadu also involved in the reconstruction”

temple

The temple restoration is almost complete & awaits the prathishtapana of the idols. It has altogether 46 shrines - 17 each on the southern and northern sides and 12 on the western side, 24 idols, 10 incarnations of Vishnu & the figures of Brahma, Saraswati, Harihara, Hayagriva and Jalasayana. A truly magnificent temple complex! Thanks to Khoday for this excellent restoration work & bringing back such a beautiful temple! We were told by the temple folks, 70% of the stones are original and 30% new. None of the shrines show any signs of water damage! They are all kept in a tank/bunker now and covered in paddy, which was a very interesting sight.  

Idol in paddy

Idol in paddy

Another good thing is there was absolutely no crowd… we just saw one other family. I am sure this will change once temple is complete.

Sunset at backwater

After watching beautiful sunset from this serene location, we thought of stopping by Brindavan Garden to see the illumination & it was around 6:20 PM… we were taken back by the crowd there as we did not expect such huge crowd on a weekday. A total contrast to where we came from! It was unbelievable and the dancing fountain area was continuously getting flooded with people, people & more people! We stood there for hardly 5 minutes and decided to leave as we could not take the crowd. It was good to see Brindavan Garden back to the old glory days with proper maintenance. The Hotel in Brindavan is well managed now by Royal Orchids group. I remember when I visited it around 2004 with an out of town friend after heavily boasting about this garden…was in for a shock after what we saw … it was a mess & looked abandoned. Now, looks like someone is doing their job :-).

Vinayaka Mylari

It was around 6:50 PM when we got out of KRS, we asked our driver to head to Nazarbad Road to Vinayaka Mylari a very small restaurant/joint & as per few bloggers and Lonely Planet is famous for Dosa for the last 60 Yrs. (Well, till now we had never heard of this place) After a long and trying hunt, finally found it just in time – 10 min before they closed for the day. It is nothing but a hole in the wall & not so clean. Everything from their menu was sold out except for plain Dosa… since we had come all the way, we thought we would try the dosa. Although it was good… it is nothing to rave about especially for Bengaluru, Basavangudi residents where joints like Vidhyarthi Bhavan, MTR, UD, Dhwarka & Udupi Srikrishna Bhavan are part of our backyard with much better Dosas :-) :-)

Steps to Chamundi

Next morning the plan was to leave early by 5:45-6:00 AM. for our walk up to Chamundi temple. When the alarm rang at 5:00, there was a sudden change in plan to go after breakfast :-) Ya… was too lazy to get up early! We decided to leave by 8:30. Breakfast buffet at the Hotel was good & elaborate. We took a rick for Rs. 100 to the starting point of the 1000 ft climb. The hill is 3489 ft high & Mysore is at 2500 ft. We started the climb of 1000+ steps exactly at 9:00 AM, these steps are from 16th century & in pretty good shape. Our first 10 min climb was the hardest as it starts vertically. I can say, the first 600 steps are steeper till you reach Nandhi (16th century, 16-foot monolith statue of Nandhi, carved in granite), the last 400+ steps are easier.

View of Lalitha Mahal

Best part is there are trees on both sides till you

Nandhi

reach Nandhi and hence nice shade & breeze. You can enjoy some good views of Mysore but sad to see the green coverage shrinking around Chamundi hills. I understand there are some leopards in this path but we did not encounter any. Forget about animals, we did not see any humans either till we reached Nandhi. We made it to the top in 45min including couple of short breaks. Not bad, uh? Had a nice fresh tender coconut and went to the Chamundi temple which is from 11th  century and was later renovated in 18th century by Wadiyar.

Vuthsava murthi

Chamundi temple

Lucky for us it was not crowded and even Chamundi decided to give us dharashana right at the temple main door itself. The priests were taking Vuthsava Murthi around the temple complex for the daily procession. Since there was no crowd, we could stand as long as we wanted near the garbha gudi. What a beautiful idol! 

Mahishasura

We went to see the ever colorful Mahishasura and then started walking down… we took 35 min to walk down. We took a rickshaw back to the hotel … as we got into the rick realized that our legs were doing all the talking. Took some rest & around 1:00 PM checked out of the hotel and went to Jaganmohan Place (built in 1861 and housed Royal family till the completion of new Amba villas palace in 1912 after it was burnt down. It became an art gallery after 1915) 

Jaganmohan Palace

Building looked nice from the outside but felt sad once we stepped in, lack of maintenance in every nook & corner was evident. Some of the Raja Ravi Verma’s paintings & few others are peeling and then there is a hall with paintings by artists from all over India, none of them has any information… felt like it is all just dumped. Asked the guard/security who is responsible for maintenance whether it is Govt or Royal family, he said it is Royal family. Not knowing at that time about the background of dispute between the royal family & the Govt, my first reaction was to send Srikantadatta an email requesting him to donate these to some art house which can maintain. Music instruments hall is also in the same state & no different from the paintings – dust, dust and more dust! 

Old building

We strolled around the Jaganmohan palace area which has such beautiful buildings but all falling apart :-( . Walking around this neighborhood, it took us back to our childhood when we used to visit Mysore every year with my father.

Kalpana Lodge

Cannot believe the hotel where we used to stay (Kalpana Lodge) is still there but has gone way downhill :-(. We even went to see Chamundi Theater & Viji was remembering her visits to this theater during her college days since the movie tickets here were the cheapest in Mysore.

Chamundi Theater

By now we got busy recalling all the wonderful memories of Dasara including, Viji’s memorable Dasara viewing from the palace darbar hall when she was 14 with my father, apparently she had to wear sari as it was the dress code for darbar hall. If I start writing about all those cool Mysore experiences & awesome time, it will be quite a few pages… I have to say, I remember so well the same excitement I felt watching every single Dasara procession whether it was from the road-side as a kid or as recent as 2007 a up-close-personal view from the VIP seating area within the palace ground. 

By now we were tired of all the walking & decided to head back. Went to bus stop at 4:00 PM. Luckily a KSRTC Airawat was about to leave for Bangalore… back in Bangalore by 7:30 PM

From my 2007 Dasara album

Just a week after my return was the sudden demise of Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar. Very sad indeed as he was the last Yedhu Vamsha Raja. Now knowing everything about what our State Govt has done to Wadiyar family and to their inheritance, my heart goes out to Wadiyar family who have contributed some much to Karnataka including KRS Dam and many more infra projects. Who can forget that KRS Dam was the first of its kind in entire Asia and was envy of USA at that time.

2007 Dasara (Srikantadatta)

They were not just rulers but extremely creative people who have contributed so much to Music & Art. I cannot believe that even after these many years - Jaganmohan Palace, Bangalore Palace & part of Mysore palace are all still under dispute in court! Thanks to our Politicians :-(! It is utter disgust to see our Govt’s attitude – heritage, rich tradition & culture is thrown out of the window for the sake of real-estate value & personal greed!
Couple of days ago, saw a re-telecast of 2011 Srikantadatta's TV interview & I liked what he said in Kannada when he was asked about the problems he is facing – it goes something like this “There is no one without problems, Elephant will have problem that only an elephant can carry and an ant will have problem that an ant can carry”