Mysore Market

These are some assorted images from the main market in Mysore. On the day I visited here, my camera had died, as the charger had stopped working and I hadn't had time to get a new one yet. This turned out to actually be to my advantage, because it gave me an excuse to ask for photos from my friend Kelvin, who went with me. Kelvin is a much better photographer than I am, has a much higher quality camera, and, unlike me, enjoys taking pictures. As a result, you can see that these photos are notably better than the ones I take, and I was able to just wander around without feeling compelled to document anything.

The market was mostly just where people buy vegetables and puja materials, but I thought it was great. People were extremely nice here, even though they could tell we were just tourists who didn't need any of the things they were selling. It was the first time I've gone to a market (or anywhere there's a store in India, I think) where noone tried to pressure me to buy something if I looked at it.

The kid who is in the first pictures actually bought me and Kelvin tea and invited us into his family's vegetable stall to ask us about other countries. Normally he would have been in school, but he was off for Eid vacation. He was twelve years old and knew English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and some Telugu. (This isn't uncommon in India, but I'm impressed every time I hear it.) He told us that his favorite food is Maggi noodles, the Indian version of Ramen noodles, and a staple of impoverished peoples' diets in many areas as well as a kid favorite like Mac and Cheese is here. He wanted to hear us talk about sports, and unfortunately we were both at a loss. He was very disappointed to hear that noone in America follows cricket, the most popular sport in India. He also really enjoyed having his picture taken, which is what started the interaction.












This market is also interesting for historical reasons because it is virtually unchanged in form from how it would have been hundreds of years ago. Markets like these were located at the front of temple complexes like the one I posted pictures of previously so that people could buy their puja goods and daily groceries. Nowdays, the vacated mandapas where people would have sold puja goods originally have been reappropriated by people selling tourist souveniers in some areas.

Keshava Temple

I saw a lot of Hoysala Temples while in South India. This is the first one that my group visited. It was also my favorite. It's considered the best-preserved Hoysala temple. It's also small enough that it wasn't overwhelming and we could take in the plan of the temple all at once. (It's not evident from the pictures, but if you are standing there, you can tell that the temple is shaped like a many-pointed star). Just imagine a lot more of this, with some subtle variations in iconography that were significant to us as students, and you'll get an idea of what much of my trip consisted of.


The man in the entranceway is the shoe-minder. When going into certain temples at archaelogical sites, you have to remove your footwear. Then, you have to give some man a pittance to "mind" them. I think his purpose is purely ornamental, since it's unlikely that he's watching who has left which shoes on the rack.

Typical Hoyshala-style columns.


This repetition of the style of the building, called a "temple within a temple motif" is common in Hoyshala architecture.

As you approach the back of the temple, the design becomes simpler, focusing on the god image that is on the back wall. Usually, especially if the temple is still in worship, you can't take a picture of the god image.


One of lots of religious scenes on the outside of the temple. This one is Vishnu incarnated as narasinha (the man lion). The man who is credited with building this temple was a general under the rule of the Hoysala king Narasinha III, so this image appears a lot here in particular.



Some scenes of courtly life run along the base of the temple. You're supposed to walk around Hindu temples clockwise (a respectful practice known as pradakshina), so if you follow the images, you're essentially lead by the iconography to do the "right" thing when viewing the temple.

Note: This temple is in the small city of Somnathpur, technically, but I'm listing it under Mysore because I saw it while staying in Mysore.

Mysore Accommodations

While in Mysore, we stayed at a place called the Green Hotel. It's the former summer guesthouse of a Mysore maharaja that is transformed into an "ecologically friendly, non-profit hotel." What this means is that they save energy resources by not washing towels everyday, not providing TVs or air-conditioning, etc, and that, after paying off all the employees, they invest their net profit in charitable causes. Good for them, I suppose, but this extreme friendliness combined with the association with the Maharaja seem a little like a forced apology for British colonialism.

Also, the hotel has the disadvantage of attracting the sort of people who want to go to India to stay in an ecologically friendly hotel. They are the same sort of people, I think, who come here to do "spiritual" things and appreciate how the setting is somehow "more natural" despite the lack of traffic, pollution, and sanitation standards that Western cities generally have. As someone who tries to seriously study the place, these are not my favorite people. Still, their presence has the advantage that you can get good Continental meals here, including eggs, which I had greatly missed. The hotel also had the best coffee I've ever had, and the staff were very nice. I really enjoyed staying there on a personal level, even though I'm not a huge fan of how the hotel tries to reinforce tourist hopes for India.

Below is one of the flower necklaces that we were ritually garlanded with upon arriving at the hotel. It's sitting on a bowl of rosewater that's left by the entrance of the rooms for the guests to rinse their hands.







This is the building where we had classes in Mysore.

Maharaja of Mysore's Palace

This building is considered the best example of the Indo-Saracenic style of architecture. This style of architecture originated as a self-conscious attempt to create a style that was a synthesis between Hindu, Islamic, and Western Classical architecture. The Maharaja of Mysore's palace was built by a British architect, Sir Henry Irwin. Mysore was an especially important area for the British colonial attempt because it was their example of the "ideal princely state" for the colonial project. The inside of the palace was very interesting, but you can't take pictures there. You are also required to remove your shoes before entering it, which I found surprising. That's a common thing to ask when someone enters a temple

Going Down South

Tomorrow, I begin a two-week portion of the trip where we visit architectural landmarks in a few different cities of the South Indian state of Karnakata. I'm anticipating that this will be more of an adventure than the previous parts of the trip simply because I had a good idea of what to expect in North India. While there have been plenty of the small quirks and surreal experiences that a person expects while travelling in India, I haven't been hugely surprised by anything. Although I've been told about a few of the differences, I have less of a clear idea of what to expect in the South. A lot of South Indians maintain that the culture is quite different, although I've also heard a few say that, in the modern age, this is becoming much less the case. There is also a large political divide between North and South, so there are some sort of political reasons that an Indian devoted to his Southern heritage might want to say or not say that the culture is different. I guess I'll see for myself.

I have mixed feelings about this adventure. I'm pleased to be learning about architecture and getting to visit actual archaeological sites with an archaeologist. I love long walks and hiking, and am told that the trip incorporates quite a bit of this as well, so that's another thing to look forward to. I'm more hesitant about the warnings that we will have less free time, which I'm afraid I will find frustrating. We will also be doing a lot of travelling around by bus. This tends to really annoy me in the United States, although I've found that the Indian rode trip is novel enough that this often hasn't been the case here, so we'll see how I feel about that part of the trip. I've also stopped myself from reading some of my newly-acquired Indian novels that I'm especially excited for to bring on this trip. If I get annoyed during the travel, reading a good book is a great way to escape that frustration. So, hopefully, everything will work out to be a positive experience.

The biggest reason that I have mixed feeling about this upcoming trip, though, is that it marks the beginning of the last phase of our education here in India. After the trip, we have a few more classes, write an essay, and begin the train-and-plane journey back to the other side of the world. While packing for the trip, we've had to start thinking about how much room we have in our luggage and decide what is and is not worth taking back to America. I will miss a lot of things here, such as the fresh tea, the foliage, the weather, the ability to hear and speak Hindi all the time, and the feeling that I am seeing new things everyday. At the same time, I'm excited in certain ways for going back to the United States. I've missed my friends and family while I've been here, and I seriously cannot wait to go to the University of Chicago library. I've also missed soy sauce, steamed vegetables, sushi, hard pretzels, not getting shoved when the sidewalks are crowded, not getting treated rudely when I don't have exact change, and the existence of traffic signals that make it safe to know when to cross the street. So I really am sad that the trip's ending, but I do have some things to look forward to.

If this weren't being put online, this is probably the part of this entry where I'd write something cliche yet true about things I've learned during this trip and how I've changed, but I'll save myself the embarrassment of that and end this post here.

The Bonfire of Foreign Garments

During the Indian Independence movement, many of the upper-class, foreign-educated Indians who habitually wore British clothing burned these clothes in a symbolic gesture. They then began boycotting foreign goods, in order to damage the British economy in Indian. Instead, they made their own cloth of homespun cotton, or khaddi, a style which is still popular for both aesthetic and symbolic reasons with certain people today. This memorial, which is literally the equivalent of a few blocks up the street from the hotel, celebrates the historic burning of foreign garments.

In case, while viewing this monument, you are slightly uncertain how to feel about the Indians or British involved, the monument include a helpful description of the event. This description uses a negative adjective to describe the British whenever they are mentioned, and a positive one to describe the Indian Independence fighters.

Hork Ok Please

There is a type of delivery truck here that's referred to as a "goods carrier" (with the English phrase used in Hindi as well). They tend to have brightly colored murals painted on them. Frequently, these murals are religious in nature. The picture above, for instance, has the famous guru and yoga practitioner Sai Baba of Shirdi painted on it. Some of the goods carriers are a lot more decked out with murals and various kitschy knick-knacks, but this happened to be the one that I had a picture of, so it's the one that you get to look at for now.



It is an unstated obligation for a goods carrier to have (in English) "Horn Ok Please" written on the back. On the first day of the trip, someone asked Arnab, who is Indian-born, why all the trucks said this, and he said that he had honestly never thought about it. I looked it up online later, and it turns out that this was to warn drivers against accidents around the time of World War II. Back then, trucks were run with kerosene engines due to gasoline shortages. These engines could explode and prove deadly at even the slightest accident, so it was encouraged that cars in the trucks' blind spots honk. Thus, the original warning was "Horn Please, On Kerosene," then shortened to "Horn Please, OK." Even though trucks arent allowed to have kerosene engines anymore, it's become part of the accepted style, and they still bear this sign.

The general anachronism of honking on the road to let other vehicles know where you are is very popular here. There are different patterns of honking that I've noticed which can variably warn someone you're coming, tell someone you're passing them, or warn someone that they are doing something wrong. As you can imagine, this means that essentially a driver is honking the horn almost the entire time he goes somewhere. Two or three times, I've hired a rickshaw where the driver periodically honked the horn while going down a straight, empty road. I'm not sure whether he thought that another car was going to materialize in front of him, or couldn't drive without the usual noise, or what. As a result of this, the sound of the traffic here is comparable to the sound of traffic in New York City, even though there are significantly fewer vehicles.