ScrewYouGuys!

We only stumbled upon going to Mysore as it was easier to get to than Ooty so we planned to nip here for a night then off to Ooty the next day.

We arrived at Mysore and were unsuccessful at the first few places we tried to stay at as they were full, we were offered a room for about 300Rs that looked like they had just removed a corpse from the bed as they saw us coming,  we managed to get a place at the Chamundi Vasathi Gruha , the manager wasn’t overly friendly and showed us a room which was ok but the shower didn’t work, he wouldn’t budge on dropping the price or giving us the empty room next door where the shower did work, most helpful. As Sam was trying to explain to him what was wrong with the shower I checked out the rest of the room and was stood in the doorway when a fat Indian bloke sticked his head out from the room across the way, next minute he comes out absolutely starkers and starts shaking hands with the bishop infront of me!!! Im traumatised by the image! so I go in and tell Sam who in turns tells the manager, the manager then starts hammering and shouting at the guys door, eventually he answers and is met by a pretty hard slap across the face and the blows kept coming, it got to the point that Sam had to say enough was enough and the fat dude was promptly kicked out of the hotel, after which the manager was alot nicer to us and gave us a better room.

After that we understandably needed a strong drink so headed out to the streets of Mysore to find a bar. En route we were befriended by a man who apparently owner an amsterdam style coffee bar and was following us basically but said eh could help us to find a place to drink, he then takes us to a street full of many places to drink but I wouldn’t be part of the party, the idiot actually expected me to stand outside whilst he and Sam went for a beer, obviously this didn’t happen so he leads us off somewhere else still going on about his cafe and eventually we find a nice roof top bar and restaurant but not before seeing some of the ugliest tranvestites you’ve ever seen and a crazy woman ranting at everyone. The guy then tells us he will wait for us downstairs whilst we go for a drink, uninterested in going to his ‘cafe’ we politely tell him not to bother and swan off for a well needed beer.

A few beers later and whilst now eating tea he comes up to our table presumably bored of waiting for us, and tell us we can have an hour more to finish up and then we could go with him, now steady on sunshine no one tells us how long we have to do anything so we told him to get lost.

A few more beers later and we thought we should explore a bit of what else Mysore has to offer, heading towards the brightly lit up Maharaja’s Palace and finding that India is a lot easier to handle when drunk Sam thought it a good idea to go for a horse and trap ride around the city with the craziest man he could find, it was ace and the landor driver was clearly off his head.  

Crazy Horse Ride in Mysore

After all the giddy excitement we head back for more beer then bed. After deciding that we rather enjoy Mysore we decided to stay another night and armed ourselves with a bottle of rum for the evening. Wandering around we were be-friended by yet another guy who said he owned the amsterdam style bar, funny that as we thought we met him yesterday. This man (who clearly fancied Sam) said not to trust others and that he was a muslim and so would tell us the truth. We had heard about some sort of 1 day festival thing yesterday where people make incense and beedies and you can watch but we missed seeing that due to enjoying the beer too much. This guy said that was a lie and that it was on all the time and we could watch the place was just around the corner he said, walking along we just happen to meet his brother the rickshaw driver who tells us he’s heading that way and will give us a lift for free (we already know nothing is free but thought we’d see it out he wasn’t getting a penny). We got dropped quite a way out of town at what just looked like a house with a poor old woman sat in the doorway making incense sticks, we then meet a very jolly man called Ranji who says he will show us around and then leads us behind a curtain to what was a very small room filled with incense and oils it quickly was made clear to us this was an opium den and we hastily made our excuses and left. We then got back to town finished the rum and made plans to leave the next morning.