Tiger organ but not as you know it

Tipu Sultan’s Palace

The day started off drizzly and remained so until late afternoon. Not the best for the sightseeing which I had planned.

I took a tuktuk to the Tipu Sultan’s Palace, modest building from the 1700s which look more like a pavilion with a mezzanine floor. On the outside, it hardly had any grounds left as it was surrounded by the hustle-and-bustle of Bangalore.

The highlight of this palace was the tiger organ (musical instrument, not body part as in China). This was a little organ housed in a statue of a tiger mauling a British soldier. When wound up, it plays a roaring sound and the soldier’s arms wave frantically in response to the tiger’s attack. While the actual instrument is in a foreign museum, the description given was good enough to put a smile on my face.

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Not the soft landing I thought

On a map it didn’t look too far to walk to the bus and railway stations which were adjacent to each other. I wanted to get my ticket to Mysore for tomorrow; even though it shouldn’t require advanced booking.

The walk turned about to be around 2km taking over an hour due to the “difficult” walking conditions (crowds, narrow or no footpaths, traffic, avoiding piles of garbage). With the occasional showers, the Avenue Rd area looked dreadfully dirty (it was, actually) and I take back what I said yesterday about Bangalore being a good place for a soft landing into India!

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Ticket to nowhere

When I finally got to the bus station, it was so bloody big with three terminals and gazillions of platforms for long and short distance buses to anywhere you can imagine.

I thought it might be easier to just buy a train ticket instead. I’ve previously been able to take pleasure in taking other foreigners who have jumped through all the hoops of buying train tickets, that I bought mind online at the official website. I now understand what they’ve had to go through (confusing counters, queues and forms).

Sadly, the official website had introduced a new requirement that requires one’s account to be tied to an Indian mobile which I don’t have. And I haven’t had much internet handy too.

So, with the failed train ticket purchase, I thought I’d give the buses a try. It turned out that the Mysore buses have been moved to a satellite station some 5km away.

At this point, I decided that I’d just buy the ticket tomorrow at the time of departure. Just as well, I hadn’t turned up at this station tomorrow with a pack in tow. Fortunately for me, the temperature here at an elevation of 920m was very kind and cool.

Bangalore Palace

I tuktuked to the Bangalore Palace. The entrance fee was a hefty INR450 (including audio guide) for foreigners, nearly five times the previous palace. The local price at half that would be quite expensive for many Indians. The extra fees for cameras, phone cameras, video cameras etc were quite staggering.Once inside, the palace was indeed a work of art with a mix of Mughal, Tudor, Gothic and Spanish elements.

The latter was the result of the local royalty hosting his deposed Spanish counterpart in the palace.

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Travel woes

I picked up the paper this morning and read that there had been some problems in Jammu & Kashmir, resulting in a curfew in many areas. I wanted to email my Srinagar hotel for some advice eg. whether there were any ban on foreigners, and simultaneously get away a whole lot of emails which I had caught up on during yesterday’s 4h flight.

My hotel wifi isn’t working. They offered to plug the cable into my laptop, but mine doesn’t have an Ethernet port. The neighbourhood is full of offices, furniture shop and saree shops. I had trouble finding somewhere to buy a bottle of water, let alone a cafe with wifi. Fortunately, I picked up some stray unsecured wifi late in the day and ate dinner close to the spot so I could send all my emails away.