My, oh, Mysore

The colors of Mysore could give you a headache if you aren’t careful. Deep, raw fuchsias compete with piercing chartreuses and fiery oranges. And that’s just at the Devaraja Fruit and Vegetable Market, where the produce alone will run your camera battery down.

Mysore is a lot easier to navigate than Bangalore. For starters, it’s much, much smaller, at around 1 million (vs. Bangalore’s 6 million); it’s laid out colonially, with grand avenues and palace-y government buildings, gracious traffic circles with statues in the center of them; it's quite an academic center, with a school campus every couple of blocks; and things feel more easygoing, less intense. Given that the main attraction here is the Maharaja's Palace, which is still inhabited by the son of the last Maharaja (he's now 58), there’s more than a whiff of Raj-era scale and majesty.

I had my first encounter with monkeys in Mysore, up near the Sri Chamundeswari Temple atop Chamundi Hill, where you can see the entire sprawl of the city from a hazy height. They are so different in person, uncaged, than at the zoo. They really look at you like they know you, and hover around their offspring protectively assuming you’re the creepy adult who wants to abduct them.

Because Janet wasn’t quite up to doing a lot of walking early in the day, we asked our driver, Raju, to take us to a hotel we had decided against, the Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel, an actual palace used to house guests of the Maharaja. True to the guidebooks, it was like stepping into a bygone era, filled with carved wood furniture, a commanding but elegant blue dining room with all the decorative details any head of state would approve of; a couple of taxidermied beasts; a backyard oasis; and a very patient and shrewd silk salesman (Mysore is known for its silks).

We also spent time at the Green Hotel, enjoying tea in the open-courtyard café while a giant monkey paced overhead. Two other monkeys scuffled on the ridge of the hotel roof, and we were lucky enough to get a tour of the rooms. If we ever stay there in the future, I’m all over the Bollywood rooms, featuring a classic movie actress’ likeness in a pattern above the beds.

Mysore comes alive at night, and we were lucky enough to land during a festival (New Year holiday) weekend, just before the special lighting of the more than 97,000 bulbs outlining the entire Maharaja's Palace complex. The palace hosts a light show from 7-8pm on Sundays and holidays. You walk around inside the grounds, for free, and finally get that forgotten childhood dream of being inside a jewel box. Dhabas, Punjab-style roadside cafes, were bustling (usually with men), the sidewalks were full, and the lights came on. Small carnivals were in full swing on either side of the palace, and the sidewalks were dark, bumpy with tree roots and mismatched pavers, but thick with families in their festival finery.

The palace itself looks like a stage set, and the inside (no photos allowed) cannot compare to anything I've ever seen. Planned to the last detail, artisans hired from around the world (Hungarian chandeliers, Parisian sculptures, Edison's lightbulbs, Scottish stained glass, the list goes on and on...), ornate beyond belief, and no rupee spared. Overdone? Opulent? Of course. Eye-popping and magical, definitely.