Bangalore to Mysore: India's Deep South Part 1

An Old Friendship Renewed and an Favourite City Revisited

To Bangalore (Bengaluru) and a Reunion with Thomas

Karnataka

India

The twenty hours of hard travelling required to reach Bangalore from Staffordshire (via Dubai) left us sleep deprived and more than usually slow on the uptake.

Having availed ourselves of the new e-visa scheme and finding a very small queue we imagined we would be quickly out of the airport. Wrong! Foreigners entering India are now photographed and fingerprinted, and the fingerprint machines do not work. Three pictures are required, left hand, right hand then both thumbs, but each had to be done four or five times with much wiping of greasy screens and greasy palms between attempts.

An hour later, after much trying, failing and trying again for us and those few ahead of us in the ever-lengthening queue, we finally received our all-important stamp and proceeded to customs to hand over our conscientiously completed forms so they could be filed and forgotten. Then we walked unchecked into the concourse. There was no one there to greet us. After walking its length peering left and right, our fuzzy minds slowly realised that there was no one greeting anyone and there must be a reason for that. Forsaking the air-conditioning we pushed through the doors into the heat outside and found greeters by the hundred. Some meeting families, others friends, business contacts or tour groups and right in the middle was Thomas waving at us.

Us with Thomas, Bangalore Airport

Thomas M. had been our driver on our second south India trip in 2010 (just pre-blog). Finding him a safe driver, a congenial travelling companion and an all-round good guy we had kept in touch ever since and ensured he would be driving us on this trip, too. He was accompanied by a man sent by the travel company to meet us, introduce us to our driver and do the translating. He was largely a spare part - we knew Thomas already and also knew that his largely self-taught English is better than that of most qualified 'English speaking guides', but he did take the photograph above.

Bengaluru - a Fleeting Visit

Bangalore, now officially called Bengaluru, is one of India's fastest growing and wealthiest cities, its success based on the information technology and aerospace industries. The road from the new airport (2008) is well maintained and lined with colourful blooms, neatly trimmed hedges and manicured grass.

Success and growth bring problems, notably with taffic and pollution. Our drive may have started on some of the most kempt roads in India but we soon encountered more variable driving conditions as Thomas fought his way along busy highways to and then round the outer ring road. We followed a series of toll roads, many of them raised on concrete stilts, their outer margins patrolled by swooping kites who looked large and determined enough to carry off, if not us, perhaps a small Maruti or definitely a motorcyclist, maybe two, one in each talon.

Round the Bangalore outer ring road

From Bangalore (Bengaluru) to Mysore (Mysuru)

We eventually made it past the city and into the flat land beyond, at first on a four lane dual carriageway then on an ordinary highway. This is sugar cane country and it was harvest time, workers in the fields slashing through the canes with their machetes. Dotted along the road were men with sugar crushing machines that quickly turn raw cane into a sweet yet surprisingly refreshing drink.

Cane Sugar Crusher (photo 2009 somewhere in Tamil Nadu)

Frequent piles of green ‘tender’ coconuts provided a different but equally refreshing drink. 'This year the coconuts of Karnatica are not good,' Thomas warned us, ‘and in Kerala they are all right by the coast, but there are very few inland.’ The trees have been affected by disease, and coconut milk and oil, without which Kerala’s distinctive cuisine cannot exist, have increased in price. 'People have had to use other oils for cooking, ' he added. 'Some say they do not like the taste.' He left it a bit vague as to exactly where he stood on this particular debate.

At lunch time we took a break in a branch of Coffee Day, a chain of bright, clean upmarket coffee shops we have used before (mainly in Lucknow) where a green tea and a chicken tikka sandwich proved some sort of restorative. We ate and chatted with Thomas about his family, one son now at university, the other well into his secondary education, and about changes in Kerala - the creeping prohibition of alcohol and the attendant corruption (while noting that Kerala is among the least corrupt states in India).

Thomas asked about changes we saw in the south since our last visit six years ago. It was difficult to say on such a short time, but I had noticed a sign beside the busy Express Way (by name if not speed) into Bangalore. 'Accidents do not happen' it read, 'they are caused.' Was the expression of such a strikingly un-Indian attitude a sign of real change or merely cosmetic?

Southern India

We eventually reached the city of Mysore - its name officially changed to Mysuru in November 2014 - and by mid-afternoon we were in a comfortable hotel room. As we had been up all night - albeit a night five and a half hours shorter than most – we were soon asleep.

Mysore - The Highlights of our (pre-blog) 2010 Visit

The Maharajah's Palace

We visited Mysore six years ago with Thomas and had returned for a specific reason (next post) but were not planning to revisit the city's major sights, so here is a very brief run through of what we saw last time. First on any tourist’s itinerary is inevitably the Maharajah's Palace. This Indo-Saracenic flight of fancy was designed by an Englishman, Henry Irwin, and was built in 1912 to replace an earlier palace that had burned down and which, itself, had been far from the first on this site. I offer here a picture of the outside only, cameras were not allowed inside.

Maharajah's Palace, Mysore

Mysore

What became the princely state of Mysore was ruled by the Wadiyar Maharajas from the 14th century until independence - with one significant 19th century interruption (next post, again). The current Maharajah still has an apartment within the palace, but in today's democratic India his is now only a courtesy title and with a freshly minted degree from MIT in Boston (Massachusetts not Lincolnshire!) he is hardly a medieval monarch.

Chamundi Hill

Chamundi Hill offers fine views over the city...

Mysore from Chamundi Hill

...but the official reason why all visitors come here is that this is where the goddess Chamundi (also called Durga) slew the demon Mahishasura, an event from which the city takes is name. The temple on the top is 12th century and beside the temple square there is a 40m high gopura.

My back and the temple gopura, Chamundi Hill, Mysore

Pilgrims who climb the hill’s 1000+ steps pass a five metre high Nandi carved from a single piece of black granite that has sat there since 1659. The idle, who go up and down by car, can also see him. Often adorned with bells and garlands, he is an object of worship in his own right and has his own priest.

Lynne and Nandi, Chamundi Hill, Mysore

Devaraja Market

Back down in the city is Devaraja market where you can buy garlands - you can't get far in India without someone bunging some flowers round your neck (see this post’s first picture), and they have to buy them somewhere....

Garlands of flowers, Devaraja Market, Mysore

...vegetables...

Vegetables, Devaraja Market, Mysore - You will never see a shinier aubergine

....including chillies. We asked the price of dried chillies and were told 100 rupees. We asked for 100 grams, an order that was treated with disdain for being so small, but 100g of dried chillies fills a sizeable bag. We also received 90 rupees change from our offered 100. Do people really buy dried chillies by the kilo?

Chillies, Devaraja Market, Mysore

Back in the Present - St Philomena's Cathedral

To return to today; we did a little more than merely sleep, we managed a stroll down the road to St Philomena's Cathedral whose twin 55m towers - apparently modelled on Cologne cathedral - were a landmark we could see from the hotel. Built in 1840 in neo-Gothic style it stands strangely but rather proudly in what feels like not quite the right place.

St Philomena's, Mysore

We did little else that evening. We headed up to the bar for some much needed rehydration and once that was done we had had more than enough for that day.

India's Deep South

Part 1: Bangalore to Mysore
Part 2: Mysore, Somnathpur and Srirangapatnam
Part 3: Kabini and the Nagarhole National Park
Part 4: The Road to Ooty
Part 5: The Nilgiri Blue Train to Coonoor
Part 6: Across the Palakkad Gap and up to Munnar
Part 7: Munnar - Tea, Dams and Elephants
Part 8: Madurai
Part 9: Rameswaram
Part 10: To the Very Tip of India
Part 11: The End of India and Beyond
Part 12: North to Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) and Kollam
Part 13: Ants, Mollywood and Varkala
Part 14: The Backwaters of Kerala (and some Coir)
Part 15: Marari Beach, Rest, Recreation and Refuse
Part 16: Kochi, a Second Visit

THE END

Bridges

I like bridges, they bring people together.

They are also structures where engineering rubs shoulders with art. Roadways slung from mighty cables span the dizzying space above vast rivers, cantilevers stretch out their arms towards each other while cosy, domesticated hump-backs still exploit the strength and elegance of the arch, as they have since antiquity.

This post, then consists of pictures of bridges; a not entirely random collection from the archives, but all of them pre-date the blog and appear nowhere else among these pages.

For my own convenience photographs appear, in the order I or Lynne took them.

The Pont Saint-Bénézet, Avignon August 1982

France

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

So I start way back in the days when I had a beard and our daughter was an infant. Siân grew up and is now the mother of our two lovely grandchildren, and the beard, well that had to go. It would be grey now, like the little that remains of the rest of my hair.

The Pont Saint-Bénézet, better known as the Pont d'Avignon

Bridges bring people together, I wrote, but not the Pont d'Avignon, not any more anyway. Built across the Rhône between 1177 and 1185 it was destroyed forty years later during the Albigensian Crusade. It was rebuilt - many times. 'The strength and elegance of arches,' I wrote, but arches are tricky things. The Rhône floods most years, and those floods often brought down an arch or two. It was abandoned in the 17th century and today only 3 of the original 22 arches survive.

The Crooked River High Bridge, Oregon, USA, April 1984

The Crooked River High Bridge

USA

Oregon

Driving north from San Francisco to Seattle in a cool wet August we detoured away from the coast in search of warmer weather. East of the Cascades and on the fringes of the Oregon High Desert we were crossing a featureless land of junipers and sagebrush when a sign warned us of the approaching Peter Skene Ogden Scenic Wayside.

It was difficult to imagine there would be anything scenic in this flat land, but suddenly and without warning (except for the sign) the land dropped away and we were amazed to find ourselves crossing the undoubtedly scenic Crooked River. We Old World Europeans had been duped by the New World, this is a young country geologically as well politically.

The wayside, now a 'State Scenic Viewpoint', is named for Peter Skene Ogden who arrived here in 1825 leading a Hudson Bay Company trapping party. The High Bridge was opened in 1926 and carried US97 when we 'discovered' it in 1983 and returned in 1984. A new bridge was built in 2001 and the High Bridge is now pedestrian only.

Bridge over the River Saar, Saarburg, Germany July 1991

The River Saar at Saarburg

Germany

This is hardly the most elegant of bridges, but it somehow makes the scene and is just high enough for the barge heading downstream towards the much larger Mosel. On the lower slopes of the hills the vineyards of the Saar are some of the most northerly and finest in Germany.

Bridge over the Debed, Alaverdi, Armenia July 2003

Armenia

The magnificent Haghpat Monastery in the hills above Alaverdi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but that cannot stop Alaverdi being one of the most depressed and depressing towns we have ever visited. Once it was a copper smelting town in the industrial heartland of northern Armenia but when the Soviet Union collapsed so did the market for its copper. The 26,000 population halved between 1989 and 2011 and although industry can look grim, industrial dereliction always looks grimmer.

Industrial dereliction, Alaverdi

But turn around on this exact spot and face the other way....

Debed Bridge, Alaverdi

...and there is Alaverdi's delightful 12th century bridge across the River Debed.

Pont de Zaglia, Spelunca Gorge, Corsica July 2006

France

Corsica

There is no road along the Spelunca Gorge, but the river can be accessed from the coastal road between Ajaccio and Calvi. A kilometre or three along the pleasantly shady streamside track brings you to the Pont de Zaglia.

Pont de Zaglia, Spelunca Gorge

Corsica has been a French island since 1794 but in medieval times it had several, often competing rulers including Pisa, Aragon and most importantly Genoa. Dominant for 300 years from the late 13th century, the Genoese built coastal towers to warn of attacks from pirates and Barbary slavers, and roads and bridges to open up the rugged interior. A simple elegant arch never built to carry anything larger than a pack animal, the Pont de Zaglia is a lesson to the builders of Avignon. Even a slim, delicate arch, when you get it right, can withstand half a millennium of storms and floods.

oOoOo

There are plenty of bridges in other posts, many of them memorable. There is the tragic yet extraordinarily beautiful bridge at Mostar, there is the cutesy 'Japanese bridge' at Hoi An in Vietnam, the elegant modern bridge across the Guadiana between Spain and Portugal, and the bridges over the Rivers Irtysh and Yenisey on the Trans-Siberian railway, rivers so huge that in the heart of the world's largest continent their banks have cranes and quays like a seaport. And there is also the misnamed Bridge on the River Kwai which we visited in November 2015 and that, too, has a story to tell.

Cannock Chase, Dismal, Dismal, Dismal: The (N + 5)th Annual Fish and Chip Walk

A Walk Truncated by Appalling Weather

Gathering at the Cutting from All Four Corners of the Earth

Staffordshire

The Chip Walk has been an institution since I don't know when. I first blogged it in year N, and this is now (N + 5) so I am running out of things to say. The participants and the route vary a little from year to year, but not much, while the lunch varies not at all (there is a clue in the title). The saving grace from the blogging point of view, the one uncontrolled variable, is the weather. This year's can be summed up in three words 'dismal', ‘dismal’ and ‘dismal’.

Anne, back from a lengthy trip to the USA, was again a very welcome guest and she drove me – just back from Thailand - through the drizzle to Haughton to pick up Mike, just returned from a nine week sojourn in Australia. Alison T questioned her husband's sanity and then she questioned mine. She was forthright and, as it turned out, entirely correct, it was a lunatic idea.

At the Cutting car park on the western edge of Cannock Chase we met Francis, just about to set off on a four week excursion to Australia and Lee, who is so young he still works for a living so hasn't been anywhere much since the summer. Brian was missing this year - he was in Hong Kong – but has re-located to Torquay anyway.

Anne, Lee, Francis, Mike
Ready to set off in the drizzle, Cutting Car Park, Cannock Chase

The Cutting to (Almost) the Glacial Boulder

It was drizzling when we arrived, the mist hung in the air and snagged on the trees forming larger droplets to splash down necks. We set off along the cutting, choosing to walk along the top to avoid the mud.

The 2012 Chip Walk, (N + 2)th, is subtitled, 'in torrential rain'. In fact the rain, which had been torrential for the previous ten days, eased off during the walk. This year the preceding week had been mild, as Staffordshire December's go, and largely dry - we avoided the deluge that drowned half of Cumbria.

Reaching the top of the Cutting we could see Brocton lurking below us in the mist. For the last three years the Chip Walk has centred on Brocton’s Chetwynd Arms. The food has been fine, the service efficient and the prices good but its location limited the scope of our wanderings. This year we were heading for the walk’s original focus, the reopened and revived Swan with Two Necks at Longdon.

Brocton down in the mist to our right

Leaving Brocton behind, we passed a bird feeding centre. Blue tits, coal tits, great tits, blackbirds, dunnocks and several species I have forgotten were busily helping themselves. The old tree stump was festooned with birds most of the time, but my photo only catches a bedraggled pair of tits (make your own jokes) and a blackbird - it was that sort of day.

Bird feeding station, Cannock Chase 

We emerged onto the western edge of the Sherbrook Valley. A wooden sign pointed towards Freda's grave, but we ignored it. Freda, a Dalmatian, was the mascot of the New Zealand regiment stationed on Cannock Chase in the First World War. She died in 1918 and was buried here, while her collar and lead are on display in a museum in New Zealand. As we were not prepared to walk 50m to see her grave, there is little chance of any of us flying 18,000km to see her lead. Sorry, Freda. [Update 2019: We did visit Freda's Grave, eventually.]

Looking over the Sherbrook Valley

Progressing along the valley’s edge we passed, though again did not see, the glacial boulder. I include a photo from March 2006; perversely the boulder seems to have aged not at all, which cannot be said of the rest of us. The web sites of the Chase Chamber of Commerce and Walking Britain both quote the phrase ‘originating from Scotland it was placed here in the 1950s’ which could be read as suggesting it was brought on the back of a lorry some sixty years ago. Geograph confirm what I always thought (and I think the others mean); the boulder was carried here in a glacier – probably from the Dumfries area - during the last ice age. The largest of several erratic boulders on the Chase, it was placed on its plinth in the 1950s, though the concrete base dates from the First World War.

>

The Glacial Boulder, March 2006 on the Staffordshire Way walk
Geography teacher Francis appears to be delivering a lecture, Mike is not listening and Alison C (absent from today's drenching) might be enthralled - or not - there is no way to know.

From the Glacial Boulder to the Fairoak Pools

Further along we made a left turn and descended into the valley, though this far up it is only a fold in the land.

Descending into the Sherbrook Valley

Slogging up the other side through the unending drizzle Francis remarked that the weather was not that bad, it was at least mild and there was no wind. On cue we emerged into an exposed area where a cool breeze was made doubly chilling by our damp condition. We soon regained the shelter of the trees and, to be fair, Francis’ observation was largely accurate.

Lee makes light of the weather

We reached the top of the valley where Penkridge Bank meets Marquis Drive. The White House on the corner (both its name and description) was once a pub but is now owned by ‘One Another Ministries International’ who describe themselves as 'conservative evangelical Christians'. The notice on their rear gate to anyone with the temerity to use their premises to turn round struck me as being unwelcoming and, dare I say it, un-Christian.

We left Marquis Drive after a kilometre, descending towards the Fairoak Pools, a corner of the Chase I don't remember having visited before.

Starting the descent to the Fairoak Pools

There are two pools and as we approached the first the local residents - mallards, coots and moorhens - who connect humans with food, paddled over to greet us. On this occasion they were to be disappointed.

The first of the Fairoak Pools

We paused for coffee standing by one of the picnic tables, the seat was far too wet to sit on.

A damp coffee beside the Fairoak Pools

A moorhen ventured up for a closer look. When Mike lobbed his apple core in the direction of the lake all hell broke loose among the waterfowl, who seemed to recognise the throwing action. I have no idea if they ever found the core.

Inquisitive moorhen, Fairoak Pools

A sign board informed us we were standing in what may once been the bed of the River Budleighensis and the cutting enabled us to inspect the deposits it had laid down.

Cutting through the deposits of the River Budleighensis

250 million years ago a huge river is conjectured to have flowed north from Brittany across England to reach the Irish sea at the Solway Fifth. It deposited the river-rounded Bunter sandstone pebbles that form the Chase (and the plinth of the glacial boulder) and various other features across the Midlands and west of England, including one at Budleigh Salterton in Devon from which the river derives its slightly odd name.

Up Miflins Valley to Stile Cop

Fully informed we strode along the path above the small Stony Brook pools….

The path above the Stony Brook Pools

….and crossed the Stony Brook by stepping-stones before descending to the railway and the A460.

Anne and Mike cross the Stony Brook

Over the main road we took the path that ascends Miflins Valley. It is not steep, but it is a long and tedious drag through the drizzle…

Up Miflins Valley

… and we paused for breath beside a venerable beech before continuing upwards to the road that runs along the top of Stile Cop. From here it was a march along the road to the further of the two car parks (why the further? Ask Francis) where Lee had left his car. We reached Longdon and the Swan with Two Necks exactly on schedule at one o'clock and found Lynne waiting.

Beech, Miflins Valley

Fish and Chips at the Swan with Two Necks

The origin of the pub name may be well-known, but here it is anyway. The queen owns all unmarked swans on open water. The only other organisations entitled to own swans are two of the livery companies of the City of London, the Dyers’ and the Vintners. From the fifteenth century the Dyers’ Company swans were marked with a nick on the beak while the Vintners’ had two nicks. Over time, 'two nicks' has become 'two necks' perhaps because it makes for a more interesting pub sign, though there are, I have discovered, at least three pubs in England still called the Swan with Two Nicks.

A choice of two excellent beers, Sharp’s dark, malty, Doom Bar and Salopian Brewery's winter special, the light hoppy, very bitter Firkin Freezin’, (there must be a better name) accompanied fish and chips all round. The quality was high, the size exceptional. Whales are not fish, but I could have sworn I had a whole battered minke. I was one of several unable to finish - indeed I did not eat for the rest of the day, Lynne ate nothing for 24 hours.

Minke, chips and mushy peas (or garden peas for Lee)
Swan with Two Necks, Longdon

Capitulation

Outside the drizzle continued, there had been no let up all morning and no prospect of change. The bright spot of the day was discovering that The Swan with Two Necks, is again thriving. Perhaps we lingered longer in the pub than we should, but by the time we left the light was beginning to fade and with it our enthusiasm for further walking. Lee drove us to the intended start of the afternoon’s walk, but as we approached the car park and watched the windscreen wipers doing their work a group decision was made to call it off. Nobody dissented.

This has never happened before on a Chip Walk, and it was disappointing, but it is many years since we have attempted to walk on a day as dismal as this. Anne's ‘smart phone’ told us that in the morning we had tramped 6.5 miles and taken some 17,000 steps, so a walk was taken, fish and chips were eaten and tradition was maintained.

I expect I am not alone in looking forward to better weather for the (N + 6)th walk next year.

The Annual Fish and Chip Walks

The Nth: Cannock Chase in Snow and Ice (Dec 2010)
The (N + 1)th: Cannock Chase a Little Warmer (Dec 2011)
The (N + 2)th: Cannock Chase in Torrential Rain (Dec 2012)
The (N + 3)th: Cannock Chase in Winter Sunshine (Jan 2014)
The (N + 4)th: Cannock Chase Through Fresh Eyes (Dec 2014)
The (N + 5)th: Cannock Case, Dismal, Dismal, Dismal (Dec 2015)
The (N + 6)th: Cannock Chase Mild and Dry - So Much Better (Dec 2016)
The (N + 7)th: Cannock Chase, Venturing Further East (Jan 2018)
The (N + 8)th: Cannock Chase, Wind and Rain (Dec 2018)
The (N + 9)th: Cannock Chase, Freda's Grave at Last (Dec 2019)
The (N + 10)th: Cannock Chase in the Time of Covid (Dec 2020)
The (N + 11)th: Cannock Chase, Tussocks(Dec 2021)
Dec 2020 - no walk
The (N + 12)th: Cannock Chase, Shifting Tectonic Plates (Dec 2023)