Around Mysore there are a lot of things to do and see, such as wilderness safaris and hikes and waterfalls, the Tipu forts (of the Muslim ruler who was in charge for only a brief spell in the area) and much more, so many people come to Mysore for the palace and then head out of town during the day for the other attractions. We opted to cover Mysore itself instead. Any plans to stroll around town or visit any markets etc had been abandoned after the first hour there. But there is a Zoo in Mysore which is supposed to be one of the better ones in the country (because it is not run by the government - as a 2 colleagues claimed we ran into there), and as Rick has been asking about going to the zoo repeatedly in the past few months, the choice to go there was easily made.
The zoo was indeed pretty good. Online it gets a lot of horrible reviews but it appeared as if a lot of upgrades had just been made or were in progress. Most animals looked ok, apart from some very skinny lions, and decent accommodation with reasonable space. We have seen much, much worse in Russia and Japan paying at least 10 times what we paid here (100 INR = 2 USD for the whole family + camera). There was some wildlife also in the form of monkeys. And some lovely typical Indian-glish signs.
The only other animals we took pictures off was the enormous crowd of bats who also had taken up residence in the zoo. I was scared, as they where huge, made a lot of noise, were dropping poop etc but Eelco was intrigued.
Me with my own monkeys.
The tour through the zoo was about 3km so quite a hike. We again where touched, photographed and questioned all the time but as it was not silly busy, spacious and a one-way tour, so it was much more manageable.
The other place we visited was the railway museum. Tucked away in a corner near the train station was this open air museum, costing a whopping 5 INR pp + 10 for the camera (total 20 INR = 0.40 USD). We saw more foreigners there then in any of the other places bizarrely enough.
The place at first sight did not look like much but it was nicely set up with signs like these:
Any trains on display we could get in apart from the carriages of the Maharani (the Maharadja's wife), making the whole place one big play ground.
There actually also was a real play ground.
With a family swing.
Rick & Kaat ran around and had lots of fun.
doing a pretend pipi in the train's toilet for instance. Kaat did hers also boys style and we were told to all wash our hands after too.
And we went on a pretend train ride for Duuk.
Daddy!!!!!
Getting the engine fired up and to go faster:
A very happy place - with the ticket desk also in an old carriage.
Cute trains.
And big wheels
and train cars
After the train museum I drove us back through the very busy Saturday traffic to the Hotel. Fortunately Anbu, our driver, was there to take us back to Bangalore. After just 30 min in this traffic I was exhausted! And Anbu was happy as he had been in the fancy fast train - with AC Madam! And no stops! Guess he was ok with the deal too.
Nice place Mysore. Next time we will pick one of the other fun places near there.
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