after an entire week of living solely within the barbed-wire and guard towers of the campus here, we finally found our first opportunity to leave and see 'real India'. the city of Mysore, which is incredibly tame, clean, and rather unpopulated, was still quite the shock for the members of our group who didn't know what to expect. so this morning 21 of us Americans hopped in a few cabs and headed into the town.
perhaps the first thing everyone noticed was the traffic. it's difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it before, but i will try anyway:
there are three-wheeled 'auto-rickshaws' all over the place, functioning as taxis. people walk all over the place, as do animals (think cows....). there are bikes ('cycles' as they are called outside of the US) and scooters everywhere as well, and a fair amount of small euro-cars (nowhere near as tiny as smart cars and others i saw in italy). there are also enough cow-/horse-driven carts around to make them worth mentioning. oh yeah, everyone is honking their horns, all the time.
the horns are used to make others aware of your presence, and are used whenever changing 'lanes', turning, entering an intersection, etc, to make sure others know you are there. lanes are more of a theoretical suggestion over here; with all the people, animals, bikes, and scooters weaving around, it would be impossible to get anywhere without hitting them or going around. also, there is almost no space between vehicles. anyone who has ever seen driving in a foreign country will agree that 'bumper-to-bumper' has an entirely different meaning outside of the US.
oh yeah, everyone drives on the wrong side of the road, too.
traffic aside, here is the rundown of our day: up at the crack of early, left campus at 10 for the Mysore Palace (kind of cool, but too modern to really interest me; we also had to take off and check our shoes in order to enter). after the palace we went to a hotel for some food (indian buffet). around this time it started raining (yay monsoon season) and we went out for some shopping; after dinner at an incredibly sketchy chinese food place, we found a pretty awesome western-style nightclub and got a round of drinks before headding home.
the stores / streets of Mysore will get their own blagging later, right now i am too tired.
a few new pictures are up (http://picasaweb.google.com/shadedaemon/IndiaAugust2008). i apologize for not having more pictures from the city, but the more touristy we looked the more street vendors / conmen / pickpockets we attracted, so we tried to stay mobile and avoid stopping or flaunting valuables (like cameras).
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1 comment:
Sounds like things are going well so far. Thanks for the photos, I thought the palace looked awesome!
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