Onto Mysore...

Travel

We took the night bus from Ernakalum (transport hub in Kochi) to Mysore. We booked a KRTC bus and it turned out to be a semi-sleeper, not an actual sleeper, which basically means that it travels throuh the night and the seats recline! The bus was supopsed to be aircon, but it was extremely intermittant and we spent a lot of the night rather hot and sticky! It cost us around 1,300 Rs for both of us and we arrived having slept a fair amount so we couldn't really complain!

On arrival Gary found our hotel easily on google maps so we knew where we were going and thankfully it was not far at all. We stayed at ‘Galaxy Comforts’ a budget hotel opposite St Philomena Church. It was basic, had hot water in the mornings and was well located, so we ended up using it as our base for 4 nights.

How to do sightseeing in Mysore

On arrival we researched the hop-on-off bus tour which sounded great but after speaking to some locals and tour operators we discovered that it only really runs ‘in season’. Otherwise there are KRTC tour buses, but these start in Bangalore and despite it then driving to Mysore, it seems impossible to pick it up in Mysore!

However we did discover that some of the city’s tour companies offer private day tours of Mysore, but it follows an itinerary so your time is limited in each place.

We decided to go for it as it was cheap and allowed us to cover multiple sights easily and we had enough time to revisit the places that we really enjoyed if we felt we needed to.

The tour included -  Jagan Mohan Palace Art Gallery , the zoo, chamundi hill & nandi bull, a lunch stop (with great Thali), the famous Mahajas 'Mysore Palace' and Phillomena Church before heading to Srirangapatna where we went to the Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple, the fort and palace before going to Brindavan Gardens, where they do a cool music & light fountain display. Its a full day starting 9am and ending 8.30pm ish.  It costs around 200 rs pp, but we ended up paying an extra 160 as we split the trip in half finishing on day 1 at Philomena Church as it then allowed us to be in Mysore town for the illuminations that evening (Sunday)...which we were pleased we had done as it was amazing and actually only happens on a sunday night 7-7.30pm - so we felt very lucky!

All in all we were pleased with the tour and didn't feel too rushed. If you wanted to do it at a more relaxed pace then probably a rickshaw would be best.

Yoga in Gokkalum

Mysore is famous for it yoga and Aryuveda and the area of Gokkalum is where there seems to be a number of yoga schools where many people do their teacher training. So the town is very westerner friendly (although that comes at a price) and has a number of of hip Yogi Cafe’s.

We decided to try out 2 yoga beginner drop-in sessions at -Yogadarshanam (800rs). Both were an hour long and pushed our boundaries physically! The 2nd day certainly was harder with tired muscles from the day before. However,  certainly was enjoyable and relit my yoga love! (Part of the reason we wanted to give it a go here was to get the ball rolling for us to begin daily practice and consider longer courses at some point in our trip!).