During my recent holiday in Bangalore, I chose to go on a day trip to Mysore as the city was a 3 hour drive away. However, I found out that day that what takes 3 hours on a regular day takes around 5 hours during peak season for the city. From the immense traffic that slowed us down, it looked like everyone in Bangalore was traveling on the highway to Mysore. As my driver mentioned, Mysore’s peak season seemed to be December and January.

The six highlights of my visit to Mysore were the following:

(1) Sri Chamundeshwari Temple:

Known by the people of Karnataka as the State Goddess, I had to visit this Durga temple with over 1000 years of history and mentioned as a sacred place in the ‘Skantha Purana’ (an ancient text) during my visit to Mysore and so made my way over to Chamundi hills first. Again as on the road, there was heavy traffic not only of vehicles going up the hill but also people on foot. After locating the ‘archana’ (individual blessing) ticket counter, I found they had two separate tickets – the regular one which meant waiting in a very long queue circling around the temple or the direct darshan, which meant skipping the regular queue and going through a separate lane to the main shrine.

With the heat outside and with limited time in Mysore, I decided to go for the direct darshan. However, I found several others had similar notions and the direct line had quite a long queue as well, albeit shorter than the regular one. After making my way to the main shrine, I found a couple of security guards hurrying people along so that people did not stop and block the queue that was waiting to enter the shrine area.

A view of the gopuram at the exit to the temple

Giving the archana ticket and flower garland over to the priest and mentioning my mother’s name, I had to move on. At the exit, there was a small counter where another priest was giving the little ‘kumkumam’ packets (red turmeric powder) and bangles as ‘prasadham’ (blessing). While my time at the temple was mostly spent in the queue, I am glad I first visited this ancient temple. I could also imagine how it might be when there was less of a crowd, though it looked like the temple staff was used to such crowds on a daily basis.

(2) Sea Shell Museum:

As I had browsed through places to visit in Mysore during my travel planning, I had come across a mention of the Sea Shell Museum on Chamundi Hill road. Therefore, I decided to stop by the little museum on the way back from the visit to Sri Chamundeshwari temple.

The museum is a tiny place with two rooms and a hallway filled with sea shell sculptures. Only one room was worth the visit and that room was filled with amazing sea shell sculptures to make it worth the visit.

The museum noted that the Ganesha sculpture by Radha Mallappa had the Guinness world record for the largest sea shell sculpture of Lord Ganesha. Whether a record or not, it was a beautiful piece of intricate sea shell sculpture.

The Guinness World Record for largest Ganesha sea shell sculpture

(3) Hotel Mylari’s Masala Dosa:

The Masala Dosa at this place was cited as a must have and so I decided to stop for lunch here. There are two Hotel Mylari’s on Nazarbad, just opposite each other and claiming to be the original. Probably a sibling rivalry among descendants of the founding entrepreneur?

Our question of which one to go to was solved as one of them only opened after 3pm and the other was open for lunch. The dosa was indeed delicious and their filter coffee a good finish to the lunch. Definitely a must-have when visiting Mysore.

The famous Mylari Dosa

(4) Mysore palace:

I was not that keen on visiting palaces during this visit and skipped such venues in Bangalore. However, visiting Mysore and not going to the famed palace seemed not right. So, I made my way over there next after lunch. Again, the peak season had crowds teeming at the entrance and within.

Entrance of Mysore palace

Moving with the crowds, one had to skim through the rooms open for visitors – the opulent darbar halls and portrait gallery etc. It was the least special of my six highlights of Mysore but it was interesting to finally see the place I had read so much about.

(5) R.K. Narayan’s house museum:

The piece de resistance of my visit to Mysore was the visit to R.K. Narayan’s house in Yadavgiri. It was learning that R.K. Narayan (one of my favourite writers) had lived in Mysore that made me decide to go on a day trip to Mysore from Bangalore.

Entrance to R.K. Narayan’s house

There is no fee to visit the house, that has been renovated and is now a museum. One of the world’s literary greats, it was inspiring to visit R.K Narayan’s (1906 – 2001) house and visit the room where he wrote most of his novels and short stories.

Writing room

Book shelf

(6) Depth n’Green café:

I had read that this organic vegan café served some of the best coffee in Mysore and decided to stop there on the way out of Mysore. It is an open café looking out onto the street and has some nice wooden stumps and benches with cushions for seating. Since I already had lunch, I opted to simply try out their regular filter Coorg coffee with a slice of walnut date cake. The coffee was decent.  I noticed that they also served coffee from around the world, in addition to some interestingly named smoothies.

Coorg filter coffee and walnut date cake

In addition to these six highlights that I had chosen to visit during my trip to Mysore, the driver asked if I would like to stop at Srirangapatna and visit another famous ancient temple – Sri Ranganathasamy temple. As we were anyway passing through the town on our way back to Bangalore, I decided to stop at the temple.

Sri Ranganathasamy temple

There was also a crowd here but at least there was a certain order in that people had to go in a single file along barricaded pathways like a maze into the temple. The priests also actually performed a short ‘puja’ (prayer) for those wishing to do an ‘archanai’ and would bring the lamp to the person who requested the ‘archanai’. Srirangapatna is worth stopping at on the way to Bangalore from Mysore or if you are staying overnight in Mysore. There were other places to see next to the temple, especially places related to Tipu Sultan, but I just focused on the temple.

Which of these highlights would you be interested in visiting?

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