MYSORE - “Royal city, Garden city or City of Nerds?”
Subject: The Travel Bug ,tour accross
If there is one place in the world I love; it’s got to be Mysore. I urge all those who haven’t been there as yet to plan a trip there. Mysore is variously known as “the royal city”, “the city of palaces” and so on.
Mysore is 6 hour drive from my hometown , but is nothing like the latter. Bangalore is called the “green city” but you have to search high and low to spot the green in the “green city”. Mysore, in my opinion, having seen both cities, is the greener of the two. It has beautiful parks, shady avenues, flowering trees on either side of the road and on the whole has more forest or green cover than has Bangalore with its unrelenting drive for development sans any sense or order.
The climate in Mysore is salubrious, in that it is pleasant climate. I even think most Mysoreans never leave, or hate to leave Mysore because most other parts of the country are extremely hot; the average Mysorean is not used to this.
Mysore is equally easy-going, well-to-do, cultured, vibrant, quaint, royal, romantic and charming. Here the old and the new, the modern and the ancient, the conservative and the liberal, live and thrive side by side without getting on each others nerves. For centuries people from various religious backgrounds have lived in harmony and Mysore‘s erstwhile enlightened and foresighted royal rulers have to be credited for essentially nurturing this spirit of tolerance among their subjects through their own conduct.
There was a time when Mysore consisted essentially of Kannadigas and was pretty conservative. This is not the case in today’s Mysore. Its proximity to Bangalore has meant that Bangalore’s cosmopolitan crowd has moved to Mysore, partly because the former has become almost intolerable to live in and partly because IT companies such as Infosys have set up shop in Mysore. In fact it is easier to commute everyday from Mysore to Bangalore for work (which a lot of people do today) than commute within Bangalore itself where one is most likely to be stuck for hours at traffic signals and traffic jams.
The “royal city” which is rich in the arts, culture, architecture, music and cuisine is well-known world-over as a popular tourist destination but Mysore is also a “nerdy” city. As many premium institutions for higher education are based in Mysore, this lovely city boasts of hosting students from various parts of the world and it is common to see young people of varied skin tones…white, brown, yellow, black ,hanging out at their favorite “addas”. A lot of westerners particularly, come to Mysore to live there and learn yoga, thus becoming a permanent fixture of the Mysore landscape.
The much celebrated cartoonist RK Laxman and his equally illustrious brother NK Narayan, author of the “The Malgudi Days”, are just two of the illustrious sons of Mysore.
Any travel directory will tell you about the famous tourist haunts in and around Mysore. It will tell you about the things peculiar to this city such as the Mysore sandalwood that the notorious Veerapan was known to smuggle illegally out of the forests, the sweet-smelling ‘mysuru malige’ or Mysore jasmine, the gorgeous silk sarees, the intricate ivory- inlaid handicrafts of rosewood, the annual Dusshera festivities, Tibetan monks from the monasteries nearby and such other things. To me Mysore means all this and more and to capture the essence and spirit of this enchanting city in a humble blog is hopelessly inadequate.
Subject: The Travel Bug ,tour accross
If there is one place in the world I love; it’s got to be Mysore. I urge all those who haven’t been there as yet to plan a trip there. Mysore is variously known as “the royal city”, “the city of palaces” and so on.
Mysore is 6 hour drive from my hometown , but is nothing like the latter. Bangalore is called the “green city” but you have to search high and low to spot the green in the “green city”. Mysore, in my opinion, having seen both cities, is the greener of the two. It has beautiful parks, shady avenues, flowering trees on either side of the road and on the whole has more forest or green cover than has Bangalore with its unrelenting drive for development sans any sense or order.
The climate in Mysore is salubrious, in that it is pleasant climate. I even think most Mysoreans never leave, or hate to leave Mysore because most other parts of the country are extremely hot; the average Mysorean is not used to this.
Mysore is equally easy-going, well-to-do, cultured, vibrant, quaint, royal, romantic and charming. Here the old and the new, the modern and the ancient, the conservative and the liberal, live and thrive side by side without getting on each others nerves. For centuries people from various religious backgrounds have lived in harmony and Mysore‘s erstwhile enlightened and foresighted royal rulers have to be credited for essentially nurturing this spirit of tolerance among their subjects through their own conduct.
There was a time when Mysore consisted essentially of Kannadigas and was pretty conservative. This is not the case in today’s Mysore. Its proximity to Bangalore has meant that Bangalore’s cosmopolitan crowd has moved to Mysore, partly because the former has become almost intolerable to live in and partly because IT companies such as Infosys have set up shop in Mysore. In fact it is easier to commute everyday from Mysore to Bangalore for work (which a lot of people do today) than commute within Bangalore itself where one is most likely to be stuck for hours at traffic signals and traffic jams.
The “royal city” which is rich in the arts, culture, architecture, music and cuisine is well-known world-over as a popular tourist destination but Mysore is also a “nerdy” city. As many premium institutions for higher education are based in Mysore, this lovely city boasts of hosting students from various parts of the world and it is common to see young people of varied skin tones…white, brown, yellow, black ,hanging out at their favorite “addas”. A lot of westerners particularly, come to Mysore to live there and learn yoga, thus becoming a permanent fixture of the Mysore landscape.
The much celebrated cartoonist RK Laxman and his equally illustrious brother NK Narayan, author of the “The Malgudi Days”, are just two of the illustrious sons of Mysore.
Any travel directory will tell you about the famous tourist haunts in and around Mysore. It will tell you about the things peculiar to this city such as the Mysore sandalwood that the notorious Veerapan was known to smuggle illegally out of the forests, the sweet-smelling ‘mysuru malige’ or Mysore jasmine, the gorgeous silk sarees, the intricate ivory- inlaid handicrafts of rosewood, the annual Dusshera festivities, Tibetan monks from the monasteries nearby and such other things. To me Mysore means all this and more and to capture the essence and spirit of this enchanting city in a humble blog is hopelessly inadequate.
i like this post and the site very much.but there are no photos added to the post and i am staying in mysore but i doesnt know there are many things to understand and to go
ReplyDelete