I flew to India and spend 5 days in-country for my day job and while I spent most of the time in meetings or at supplier sites, I did get a chance to get out in both the city of Mysore, three hours south west of Bangalore and in half a day in Bangalore to take some pictures and see some sights. 

With a couple hours free, I went to the Maharaja of Mysore’s Palace, built in 1912. Stunning. The castle, the grounds, all of it.  A lot of time is spent in upkeep on the palace and on the grounds. Labor in India is not an expensive thing, so while building materials and the cost per square foot to build things is comparable to the west, the manpower to do stuff and build and repair is Infinitely less. 

I was working in Mysore, but my airline tickets were booked in and out of India through Bangalore, so on the way back toward the airport I stayed at a hotel in the heart of the city. The Oberoi is stunning. A really nice place to stay and would be in any country. The grounds are amazing. No, really. I know that word ois overused, but it is like staying in a park with a Michelin star restaurant.  

Since I had such a positive experience at the Mysore palace, I decided to take an hour and check out the Bangalore palace, which is sort of modeled after Buckingham Palace. I was more than a little disappointed.  There are absolutely no photographs allowed of the interior. I’m not sure if that’s a privacy concern or because it’s so shabby. There is so much potential and they have actually done a bunch of work to the doors and trim and some of the ceilings, but they have some amazing art that is not taken care of and is moldy and damaged, and just put up here and there to cover walls that need attention. You don’t get to tour the whole palace, really just the two wings adjacent to the sallyport and a couple of open air atriums. 

There is an entire wing and some grounds behind a wall and a greenhouse/orangeries that you don’t have access to on a tour. Probably someone still lives there.

The formal garden out front is only haphazardly taken care of, and there’s trash in the bushes and just general disarray.  It was not a palace that I would recommend to future visitors.  It could be, but not in its current condition.

I also toured the main Hare Krishna Temple in Bangalore, and that was an experience. I didn’t know that you could pay to skip the devotee line until I was halfway through the line as the faithful recited the mantras. It took me like 45 minutes to go from the entrance into the main hall because I had to take one step at a time with the rest of the devotees.  There was no walking ahead. I just went with it and enjoyed the cultural experience.

I will say I was most impressed after the temple tour: you walk through an area where people are fed. There were some people there that just took a bit of porridge in the edible bowl because it was offered to them and they had gone through worship at the temple that day, but there were some folks there that really needed the meal and apparently there’s no cost. You just have to spend an hour of your day going through the mantra walk and then you get a meal. Now, it’s not gonna make you fat if you do it twice a day, but it’ll keep you from starving. It was impressive to see and really made my heart a little happy. I gave them some cash that I hope goes to feeding people in need.

On my way back to the hotel before we left I did have a long conversation with a guy who ran a sugarcane pressing mill. I was in Bangalore during the sugarcane harvest season and they have street vendors that set up mills that crushed the sugarcane and provide juice for people and they sell it on corners and it train stations and bus stops. This one vendor spoke really good English and we talked about the machine and the Honda engine that was running it and what he does with the sugarcane afterward, etc. I appreciated conversation and now I know more than the average bear about sugarcane processing in India   

India has always been really hard for me. There is so much beauty and so much ugliness, amazing sites and smells and people coupled with absolute depravity and tragedy and poverty.   The volume of humanity can be crushing as well. Bangalore has 14 million people in the city and the roads are absolutely packed. So much hauling so much dust and so much exhaust. Walking in the city and having to cross streets is literally taking your life in your own hands as traffic rules/laws here are an absolute fucking suggestion.