After a very hot & busy bus journey i arrived in Mysore, a sprawling city. It was busy but not like the other major cities & I decided to see if i could follow my nose & find a place to stay by walking rather than catching a rickshaw. I wandered around the same streets for a while looking for a place mentioned in the guide, only to find that it was been renovated! Having had enough of lugging my backpack around in the heat i gave into a rickshaw driver who offered to take me to a hotel. The third place i saw i settled for, it was clean & had just been painted & the bed was comfy, always important! The same richshaw driver said he would show me around the city for a small fee so i agreed. He showed me the palace & took me, at my request to a yoga centre but then also showed me to a place where they make essential oils & incense & the veg markets. I quickly realised that all the tourists hitting mysore get taken to the these little places & suddenly without a thought in the world about buying essential oils there you are buying some!
The next day i visited the sites of mysore & the surrounding area, something hill (forgotten the name) where there is a temple at the top. Then i went to the outskirts of city to Srirangapatnam to visit an old palace, here the building itself was in a typcial indian state, in need of a good clean up but the gardens around it were lovely. AFter been in the city it was nice to have some space & I used my time to sit & meditate under a tree. In the morning i had got annoyed by the rickshaw drivers as one had broken down , then he passed me onto his friends, then kept taking me to shops i didnt want to go to & I felt they were trying to rip me off, generally i was getting annoyed by them. AFter my period of meditation however i felt alot better & managed to spend the rest of the afternoon much calmer.
That evening I was leaving Mysore to catch a train back to Bangalore where i was catching a nighttrain to Cochin in Kerela. I was taught a valuable lesson, always check your train ticket before travelling! I had a series of mishaps that evening as I went to Mysore station & found that the train i wanted to catch didnt run on a Tues. Whoops, this meant i would catch the next one but it would be tight to make my night train. Still ever the optomistic, i hoped I would make it. So far in India i had been really lucky with the trains.
The train to Bangalore was a busy busy busy commuter train & it got delayed! As the time ticked away I started to get a little nervous but still hoped we would make it into Bangalore on time! My train left at 9pm i thought from Bangalore city station & we finally started to pull into the station around this time. It was only at this point that I looked at my onward ticket & so did various Indians who all wanted to get involved & help me find my train. Then they told me that the train wasnt leaving from Bangalore city but it was leaving from another station outside of Bangalore. OH NO>>>> what a muppet! I was sure the travel agent had told me it was B.central staion! URRRRR. I was v.hot, tired & really didnt want to spend another night in a city. Also i knew that this train route was v.busy & i wouldnt get another decent sleeper seat & for the first time I had got 3rd AC class! There was no way i was going to make the train though & i kind of panicked slightly!
Of course there are always lots of indian men who like to take control of the situation & help you out. I was v.greatful as a guy marched me off to the guards office. The guard of course didnt listen to me but listend to the guy who was with me instead, its funny & annoying how your voice as a women is rarely heard as you speak with indian men! Basically i could get half my money back on my ticket & see if there was any space left on the last train to Cochin from B.city station. However the guard couldnt tell me that & we had to march off to the busy ticket office. Here there were no queues, of course that doesnt happen in India, everyone just piles round the desk, pushing each other out of the way! Complete chaos!
It looked like i would have to spend the night in B, but then the ticket guy said would i go to somewhere else in Kerela, i said yes & so he booked me on the only sleeper train that had availability that night! Yes I was going, woohoo, I had no idea where it was going too but i didnt care, i just wanted to be on my way! I had a tight schedule now that I was leaving the country in a few weeks!
I thanked the guy who patiently helped me & then made sure I went to the correct platform in plenty of time, of course the train ended up been late but i was happy i was just going to be on my way!
I vowed that I would check my train tickets from now on, haha! I slept very well, I am now well used to Indian trains & find them v.good, you just have to make sure your organised & book in advance as they are always busy! In the morning I arrived at an unknown destination & then had to hop on another train for 6-7 hours to get to a place on the backwaters. Everything went smoothly in the morning & i got on the first train & even managed to get some chappattis & banana's on the platform for breaky! I'm always happy when i manage to get some food!!!
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