Mysore, A City Of Tree Lovers

Living conditions have deteriorated badly in most cities in India. Air and noise pollution levels have risen tremendously, as has the volume of traffic. Simultaneously these cities have also become extremely pedestrian unfriendly. In this respect some of the cities that come to mind are Chennai, where I live, and Bangalore, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore, and Hyderabad, all cities that I am very familiar with. And, I understand from my friends who are as familiar with other cities in India as I am with these, that it is the same sad story with most cities in India.

Mysore is however one city that seems to have retained its charm. I have been visiting it, though not frequently, over the last fifty plus years. Of course it too has grown and changed during this time, but unlike other cities it has not yet become an unbearably noisy and  crowded concrete jungle. Though traffic has increased, many parts of the city are still very walkable, and the pollution level is definitely very much lower than that of other cities. And, although many old buildings have been replaced by bland new ones, this city still retains many fine old garden houses that give Mysore its special character. My wife Nithi and I therefore were very happy  to spend a lot of time wandering around on foot. 

The people of Mysore seem to hold parks and plant life in special regard. There were several parks close to the hotel where we were staying. One of these parks had a very interesting gateway. On the last day of our stay I decided to go and photograph it so that I could sketch it later. I then noticed several groups of people gathered together within the park, performing rituals near various plants and trees. I continued walking past this particular park and everywhere that I went, in all the parks in  that area, there were people of all ages coming in to pay their respects to the trees and plants. I had not seen this happen before in any of the other cities. Maybe this is something unique to the people of Mysore and that perhaps explains why Mysore alone, among all Indian cities, is bucking the trend and preserving some of its charm.

Surprise....a holiday over water

Kottayam is located on the edge of the Vembanad lake, a large waterbody which connects with the Arabian Sea and is therefore in some ways a backwater. The South Indian state of Kerala has many such waterbodies, most of them connected to one another. There are also very many manmade canals. All these are used extensively to transport people and goods.

After resting at the club for a few hours we got ourselves dropped at a boat jetty. My wife was relieved to learn that we would not be holidaying at the club, and quite excited that we would be travelling over water to our holiday destination (wherever that was :-)).

On the way to the jetty we saw that while many of the houses that have direct access to the water have their own private piers and boats or canoes, some of the ones that were not located next to the waterbody had cut canals and brought the water right up to their doorsteps.

My wife expected that we would be catching a ferry or some such means of transport. Imagine her surprise when she saw a houseboat pulling up at the jetty. I had arranged for us to spend the first 24 hours of our actual holiday on this houseboat.

Until the early 90s these boats or barges were used primarily for transportation, and that too mainly to move goods. They were powered by wind (sails) and manpower (oars or poles). About 15 to 20 years ago Kerala realised that it had tremendous potential as a tourist destination and that is when a large number of hotels and holiday resorts sprang up. Somebody came up with the very enterprising idea of converting these barges into houseboats and the idea has really caught on since then.