Mysore during Dasara

Day1:
It was yet another unplanned trip to Mysore. Rather, it was a trip that had been planned for the next weekend but enthued Arien decided that he was too bored to stay at home this weekend and so we were going to Mysore tomorrow. I was totally tempted to say NO. If you are wondering why?? Well.. that is because I am a lazy piscean who prefers to relax (code-word for laze) at home after a tough week of writing highly technical stuff which no one reads and he is an Arien who lowes to travel, work hard, keep busy, etc etc etc. So did we go? Of course, we did. Lazy piscean had promised that she would try to be enthusiastic about sudden trips and so she could not really say No, could she?? Grrr... As usual, Arien decides the time when we would leave for Mysore which is between 4 am and 5 am. Egzactly!!! Well.. we finally leave at 6 am :) No trip to Mysore is complete without a stopover at Kamat and we did that.

We decided to visit Krishnaraja Sagar Dam. They have a cute little aquarium inside, where the star attraction was a fish that cost forty thousand rupees.

Hordes of locals and the two of us spent

more than an hour gaping at all the fishes and the celebrity fish in particular. I have never spent so much time in an Aquarium before and I was informed by the wise Arien that the Bangalore one was a lot better. The celebrity fish looked like a villain in a hindi movie. It had an eye that looked akin to a glass eye and stared you down.

There were lotsa other fishes too. We, now have appr. zillion snaps of fishes, most of whom I

cannot recognize or name :(

Anyways, we started walking towards Brindavan Gardens. It was a looong walk... and it was noon and surprisingly the weather was humid. I felt like I was in Chennai and that surprised me quite a bit. I had not been to the gardens in a really looong time. The garden was renowned for being the location where most film songs, romantic scenes were picturised not so long ago. It looked lovely from outside but on closer inspection we found that it was xtremely dirty :(

The flowers were in full bloom and looked very pretty and the waterfalls looked nice too. I recalled that they had the musical fountain at 7 pm. We were roaming around the place at 1 pm and soon it just got too hot and I got too cranky. Also, around the same time, we figured out that all hotels at Mysore and Srirangapatna were fully booked and that we may not have a place to stay the night. Yuppp... However, that did not deter us from taking quite a few snaps of the place that was. We also realized that everybody comes to enjoy the water fountain later in the evening and you cannot see the dirt at that time :) Well... not sure if that was nice to know or not... hehehehehe :)

It must cost a lot to maintain the Brindavan Gardens the way it is - I mean the flowers looked so lovely and colourful... I am just wondering about the number of people who have to work to make the Brindavan Garden look good... and while there is always scope for improvement... it is a great effort in itself. Anyways, I soon lost interest in the Gardens and wanted to know where we were going to stay, if we planned to stay on. A sudden cancellation by some person was a lucky break for us. We decided to check-in, have lunch and then plan our next outing. After a not-so-bad lunch, we were tempted to take a nap but did not do so. Instead we decided to check out the amusement park, GRS. There was some half-day offer kinda thing and so we decided that it may be worth the look. I was totally tired and did not want to go on the thrilling water rides and opted for the slow water rides. Managed to get completely drenched in the wave pool. As if that was not enuf, it suddenly started raining and did not abate for almost half an hour :( If it weren't for the fact that I was totally drenched, I would have found it funny :P Anyways, we decided enough was enough and headed back to the hotel. A quick shower and a hot cuppa chai later, we were ready to check out the Mysore palace. The time was almost 8:15 pm and the whole place was lit up and it looked so lovely. All roads that lead to the palace were lit up and so we followed them to see the palace. There was a Carnatic concert going on at the same time which is that small corner which is lit up slightly differently. I have heard that for the entire navarathri, various artists would come and perform for each day. I was pretty impressed though I was unable to recognise the singer. The crowd was not unruly and we were able to move around without worrying if we would lose each other. We were late and we did not have too much time as they planned to close the place to visitors in less than 30 mts and so we walked around as if we were going to miss the bus - we did not have time to gape, stare in awe, or comment on the beauty as we were worried.... However, we did the entire round and left before they started closing the place for visitors. It took a while to sink in. We stared in awe as we moved out. Security was at an all-time high and for the first time I worried about bombs. I mean bombs are usually placed at places where there are huge crowds... Time to stop worrying 'bout stuff like that and concentrate on something else... Dinner?? Yeah!!

We decided to have dinner at a popular place, Parkland Hotel. It was the worst experience ever. We waited till we almost dropped off and when the dishes finally reached our table, it was stone cold. I am not exaggerating. We managed to gulp down the food as we were not really sure how long he would take to bring it back and we were totally sleepy. I was trying very hard to keep my eyes open. The theme at Parkland was good and drinks were being served at an amazingly fast pace and since we had not ordered any drinks.. I guess they forgot about us. Well, never mind.. we were ready to go back. We quickly paid and left for the hotel. When we reached the hotel, we realized it was almost 11 pm. That was end of Day1. Zzzzzzz... Arien starts snoring ... Hehehehe :D