My Drive to Mysore

After nearly 8 months, I managed to take my car out on a longish drive. In fact, this was supposed to have happened at least 3 months back, but then the car had met with an accident on the eve of the trip, and we had to cancel the plans then. Since then, though the frequency of my drives had increased, it was still within the traffic-congested roads of Bangalore. Then, sometime in May, Ranji gathered support from her friends and pressurized me to take her to Mysore. I relented and we decided to go in the early part of June for a day's trip.

We managed to brave a few minor obstacles in our path and started from Bangalore at around 2:30 p.m. I had brought the car to office in the morning, and Ranji joined me there at 2 p.m. In typical fashion, my team wanted some urgent help just as I was about to exit the office. That delayed our start by close to half an hour. Then, we were held up numerous times, especially at BTM, because of the traffic, before we could reach JP Nagar to pick up our friends. There were another two who joined us at Vijay Nagar in their bike, and finally we were off.

I was more than a little apprehensive about my abilities to drive through the highway, especially since the vehicles move at considerably faster speeds. The fact that I had gotten up early in the morning for the shift also didn't help matters. But the thrill of going on a long drive won over everything else, and I pressed on the gas and off we went. The going was much better than whatever I was used to in the city, and it didn't take me much long to get a feel of it all. Very soon, I fell into the rhythm of highway traffic. The bike guy was used to long drives, and it didn't take him much long to disappear into the horizon, but I kept reminding myself not to turn this into a formula one race, to keep my cool, and basically just enjoy my drive. There was an odd moment when the speedometer crossed 120 kmph, but the rational side of my brain quickly took over to bring it back into much more manageable 80-90 range. We initially thought of driving straight to Mysore but our friends felt like having a coffee, and that was temptation enough for me too to stop the vehicle.

We found a Cafe Coffee Day before Maddur and decided to have a few snacks and coffee. Just as we were all lingering over our coffee, my wife found that the coffee-bean like black thing at the bottom of her glass seemed to be having wings. That is when we all realized that was a dead fly in the coffee. That led to all the women in our group to go over to the counter and have an exercise for their throat muscles. Once done with that, we decided to resume our journey.

Since we hadn't booked any rooms in Mysore, we did find out the numbers en route from some of the billboards and called the hotels up, but gave up that endevour pretty soon when we realized that all those hotels were priced well beyond our budget. We decided to take a risk and directed ourselves to Brindavan Gardens straightaway. It was quite dark by then, and I was feeling the effects of it all slowly and finally gave up the steering wheel to my friend when we were almost there at the Gardens.

I had first visited Brindavan more than 20 years back when it had still not lost its glory completely and most of the sights were still worth watching. The Brindavan that I saw now was just a pale shadow of it all. I don't know whether I have grown more world weary and wasn't able to enjoy the beauty or whether the beauty had actually diminished, but it just wasn't the same for sure. The musical fountain looked rather comical now whereas it had looked great when I had watched it first. The fact that the entire area around the fountain stinks of urine doesn't help matters, I guess.

After Brindavan, we headed towards Mysore City. We finally managed to find rooms at Hotel Mysore Complex or something similar sounding, not a great hotel but we were looking to just spend the night and use the bathroom facilities in the morning, so it didn't matter much to us. We had an excellent dinner at a restaurant nearby, where the excellent food more than compensated for the pretty average service. Well fed and extremely tired, we all trooped back to the hotel. Since everyone was extremely tired, instead of going to sleep and taking adequate rest, we decided to pass time by playing antakshari. It was around 2:30 a.m. when we finally decided to sleep; I was up for 22 hours by then!!!

Late to bed meant we were up only by 8:30 which effectively ruled out a trip to Chamundi Hills. I had wanted to do that, but since most of the others weren't, we dropped that plan. We got ready, had our breakfast, and proceeded towards the Mysore Palace.

While Brindavan didn't look the same after all these years, the Palace seemed to retained its glory. It was still gleaming and still in quite good condition. Considering the fact that the staff there has to put up with quite a few ignorant or careless Indian tourists who don't care two hoots for the maintenance and keep jumping the ropes or scrawling graffiti on the walls, they definitely were doing a good job. Since this was Ranji's first trip inside the Palace, she was extremely impressed with it all. I guess she was even tempted to try out a few of her Bharatanatyam steps at the circle where dancers would have mesmerized the kings.

After Palace, we headed towards Jagmohan Palace, the art gallery. We missed the hour to see the French Musical Clock that is there. This clock, at the stroke of every hour, has toy soldiers who take a march around. We decided to take the tour of the gallery and rushed through it all before assembling ourselves in front of the clock at 2 p.m. The clock stuck 2, the soldiers marched around the clock, and then we marched out towards our vehicles.

We decided to try out Metropole for lunch and had the buffet lunch at offer there. The food was really excellent, and we all just enjoyed it immensely. In fact, we had so much that we felt like going back to a hotel and taking a nap. The strain of it all was beginning to show on one and all. Gamely, we all trooped to the car and bid adieu to Mysore. I drove the car for almost half the way, but by then I was too tired and handed over the wheel to my friend. Ranji had wanted to try her hand at driving in the highway, but we were all rather skeptical and ultimately didn't allow her to drive. She didn't like it one bit, and that was quite understandable. Anyway, we reached back to Bangalore at a much faster pace than while going. We all were pretty bushed by the time we reached back, but we were all happy that we took this break. We broke up assuring each other that we would do this more frequently.