April 30, 2016 – Mysuru, Karnataka, India

Well Well Well!

Welcome again and allow me to tell the tale of Jagre Family’s South India tour.

This was the first day of this tour and we started it with the lovely city of Mysuru, formerly known as Mysore. Before starting with the actual story of the tour, when I was flipping through the photos, I found out all the bills and receipts from this tour and found out how cheap this trip was for me financially. I had booked the entire tour with a tourist agency, which made sure we had access to buses and hotel for the entire duration, which was really nice and highly convenient. This made me realize how easy it was to travel around India, without spending too much of your money, which is both nice and affordable.

Now, getting back to the travel part. Below picture shows our bus which was from Manish Travels, one of the famous travels that the agency had provided us. Like our family, there were many other people traveling with us from Bangalore to Mysore and we didn’t mind the company.

I took the photo of this bus at the stop area where we stopped during the journey for some drinks, food, and much needed pee break. Now, the reason I remember this stop is because there was a pack of dogs surrounding our bus. While most of us decided to head to eat something, my Dad decided to stay back to feed these hungry souls. There was a small store nearby. I remember him going to the store and buying some Parle-G biscuits and breaking those biscuits in small pieces to feed those stray and hungry dogs. That was so generous of him and he loves doing that. Feeding the hungry and helping the poor is a second nature of him.

Anyway!

This was the first place we stopped at on our Mysuru tour. I don’t remember the name of the place and found it just beautiful enough to click a few pictures here.
As you can see, we were toasting ourselves in the hot and sunny weather. Back then I had only been in India for my entire life, so I used to detest the Indian Summer, but having spent almost four years in the US makes you appreciate Summer more.

The second place we stopped at was this famous statue of this demon Mahishasura. I am not sure why a daemon like him has a statue. I am sure there is an interesting back story to it, but, my atheist nature made me lazier to google about it and find more interesting facts. May be in the future when I would feel like knowing more about him/it, I would surely find out and (if possible) let you know. Till then, sorry (but no Sorry 🤪)

Near this statue was this famous Chamundeshwari Temple. A little back story about the pictures above and below. If you see, all the kids and “fun” people were near the statue above and clicking pictures with it. However, all the adults were busy worshipping the Gods at the temple and they spent almost an hour doing that.

You can see the wrath of the hot Sun in the below photo too. The architecture of the temple was outstanding, but, I couldn’t appreciate it as it was a temple and I was/is an atheist.

Soon after worshipping the Gods, it was time to worship ourselves and our hungry bellies and souls. I think the travel agency had a partnership/alliance with the restaurant that you see below, because they seemed to stop here deliberately. I don’t know how much of it is true, but the food was really tasty, so didn’t complain much.

You can see my Mom and aunt posing before the entrance.

After our lunch, it was time to explore a few more places. Trinesvaraswamy Temple was on our list next. Sometimes I wonder why so many travel agencies focus on temples to explore/visit during the city tours. I understand it has really awesome architecture and must be a great story behind its creation, but, millennials would prefer visiting some cool places apart from some temples. Anyway, I decided to keep my feelings to myself as parents found this place amusing. I know they spent almost an hour here, maybe relaxing and stretching a little bit after the lunch! 😁

One more “temple”, well, it was a “CHURCH”. I think, we didn’t have the luxury to go inside, but were impressed at how tall this building/church was. I remember our guide telling us this to be one of the tallest churches at least in Asia, known as, St. Philomena’s Church. I was glad that this was a little different experience for the family. The kids were especially excited to “visit” this church. I think this was the first time they were visiting a church. I might be wrong.

This brings us to the end of the day festivities. The last spot before heading to the hotel was Brindavan Gardens. Now, let me tell you, this might be one of the prettiest places in all of Mysuru, but by the time we reached here, everyone of us were super tired and just wanted to lie down. So, when the driver told us that this will be the last stop before we head to the hotel, we were not that much excited and just wanted to get over it. Maybe, that’s why we couldn’t appreciate the beautiful water fountain laser show at the end of the evening. Plus, it was a rush hour with barely lit pathway to the laser show, so we had to take care of the kids.

I am sure we would have enjoyed it more had we been more energetic.

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful day that I spent with the family in the beautiful city of Mysuru. At the end of the day, once we were at the hotel, I don’t even remember where we had our dinner before calling it a night.

One day down, two more to go!