We visited a small city called Mysore today where there is a really beautiful palace. It was about a three hour bus ride away from Bangalore, so we set out early in the morning for a day trip to visit the palace and surrounding city.
The trip there was pretty long. We took two local buses before we reached the station where we could take a bus to Mysore. In India, there are options for air conditioned as well as non-air conditioned (therefore cheaper and not as comfortable buses). We took the air conditioned one and it turned out to be a really comfy bus with seats that reclined almost all the way. I, therefore, took a very nice three-hour long nap on the way there 🙂
When arrived in Mysore around 1 and had lunch at a local restaurant, and then we found these horse-drawn rickshaws that took us from where we were to a silk factory and then to the front gates of the palace all for 20 rupees (about a third of the cost of our lunch that day).
The silk factory was beautiful and had so many colorful pieces of silks to make saris, scarves, and other clothes. Mysore is known for producing silk but it was a little on the expensive side, so I didn’t buy anything – I just liked looking at the pretty colors!
On the ride from the silk factory to the palace, it started pouring. But the rain and the rickshaw made for a very fun ride!
We got to the palace, and the tickets were 40 rupees for regular adults, but 200 for foreigners – they didn’t even try to be discrete about ripping foreigners off! Haha but the palace was nonetheless beautiful.
We had to take off our shoes to go inside and we weren’t allowed to take photographs inside. Richard tried to secretly take a photo but a security guard caught him and took his iPhone away. But then Richard pulled him aside, bribed him with 100 rupees and got his phone back. I think we’re starting to get the hang of how things work in India 😛
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We heard that there was an amazing show at night and the palace looked really beautiful because the entire thing is lit up with thousands of lightbulbs for only a few minutes each night. But they make everyone leave the castle and buy another 40 rupee ticket just to see the show. So we did that and came back to watch the show on the huge lawn of the palace where they had set up plastic chairs. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes in, it started pouring rain. Tons of people just got up and left because of the rain. We didn’t all have umbrellas, and the show was in Kannada so we didn’t even understand what was going on, but we had to get our 40 rupees’s worth and the day we spent traveling to see the palace light up at night, so we took the plastic chairs, put them on top of our heads and stayed during for entire show.
The five minutes that the palace was lit up was totally worth it though – it was amazing!
  