Mysuru - "one of the cleanest cities in India"

Well here we stayed in the Hotel Continental Inn and Suites and it was fine except for the echoey corridors so woken at all times of the night by happy people chatting and also the ghostly sounds of Bollywood on the Telly up the hall. But there you are Indians are pretty loud generally.

The hotel is attached to a very very good vegetarian restaurant where we had a 2 quid breakfast of Idli, Vada, Dosa and Sambar. We ate there in the evening and the food had the wow factor that you usually only get in fine dining and it was a normal place so 5 stars for that.

Sightseeing

The musical instruments/wax museum. A huge collection of all sorts of musical instruments with the addition of several tableaux of life-size wax models playing the instruments. Very eclectic.

The seashells museum - everything made of seashells including world-record sized models of Ganesha and a cathedral which had taken many years to build. Jaw-droppingly good and in addition the artist (a lady) was there too supervising the gift shop.

Sand sculpture museum. Another female artist who had spent ages working on some huge piles of sand in a shed and created a number of recognisable and attractive reliefs. Unfortunately all around the piles of sand were tat stalls and a most distressing bird cage with about a 1,000 budges crammed into it which you were supposed to pay to have your picture taken with.

The Rail Museum. Fairly recently opened with some nice locos and carriages and even a royal carriage. There was a little toy train circuit so madam was very happy with that.

Mysuru Palace - justly famous tourist attraction very opulent palace but not that old, late Victorian era actually. British architect too surprisingly. Very popular with the Indian tourists who were taking one million selfies. Entrance fee much higher for "Foreigners" but that is not an unreasonable pricing policy TBH. There is a one-way system so once you start the tour there is no going back. It's a shoes off palace so you give your shoes in at a window long with everyone else and get a numbered ticket in return. The guy asked me for a tip and I was so surprised I gave him 20 Rupees.

Mysuru Zoo. Really big well-kept and interesting zoo where we finally saw leopards and Indian Wild Dogs (Dhole) which we hadn't seen at Kabini as they obviously keep away from the jeeps and buses. Superb Gift Shop at MRP prices.

All the above attractions we packed into 1 day's tourism which was a pretty impressive feat of sightseeing IMHO

We also attended the sound and light show at Mysuru Palace in the evening and even though the commentary was in English we were slightly underwhelmed particularly at the poor sound quality and the almost unintelligible voices telling the story. On this occasion we were not charged a higher "foreigners" rate which applies to the palace entry.

NOTE ABOUT WALKING IN MYSURU. Bear in mind that our hotel was less than 1Km from the palace so pretty central. We looked on Google and saw that there was an eatery/bar less than 10 minutes away "walking distance" as you might say. As we stepped out of the hotel we started to realise this was not going to be a stroll of any kind. Every other step we were propositioned by auto drivers who obviously thought we were mad. The pavements were full of gaping holes and mostly completely blocked by parking of all kinds of vehicles mainly motorbikes. So forced out into the road the aggressive bipping starts. But the worst horror was to come - attempting to cross the road. Even with zebra markings on the road the traffic shows no intention of slowing or stopping for pedestrians. You just have to take your life in your hands and hope that the autos, motorbikes cabs and cars take evasive action, (which actually they do) and bear in mind that all vehicles are driving too fast to start wit . However buses and lorries do not they just come straight at you at 40 mph. After crossing 2 roads we were gibbering wrecks and had to get a stiff drink. It's no easier for the Indians they have to take massive risks as soon as they step out into the road. If Mysuru City Council want to attract European tourists they need to do something about this problem!