Aloha,
From my previous post I mentioned Chennakesava Temple, from there we drove to Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace. It was about a 20 minute drive from the temple to the summer palace, heading back towards home. The Palace grounds is actually really big and has different sites to visit, but it’s too far to walk to all the sites so we drove around and stopped at places we wanted to see.
We first went to the Gumbaz which holds the Tipu Sultan’s grave and his family member’s graves as well. This is a Muslim site, which you can tell is completely different from Hindu sites. The architecture that was practiced in both religions are very different. The Gumbaz was also very beautiful, with the round dome on top of the structure with its elegant trim of carvings. It was a light tan or a cream white color. It was interesting to see the graves of the Sultan’s family, luckily, they had signs saying which grave was whose. The Tipu Sultan’s grave was inside the beautiful dome building, while the family’s graves were outside. The graves were like small rectangular pyramids, very beautiful, with the same cream white color. The graves of the Tipu Sultan’s, his children and his wife were all decorated with flowers and drapes of cloth, making the graves very vibrant in contrast to the cream white color.
We then went to the Daria Daulat Bagh which had a museum of the history of the Tipu Sultan’s life and home. We had to pay for this site, usually the foreigner fee is about 300 rupees, but Krupa went up to the window and 3 Indian fee tickets which were 25 rupees. I just had to walk in really fast. But I also had proof that I am Indian sooo I should get the 25 rupee fee anyways haha. It was nice to walk around and look at the history there. They had on display the furniture that they used, the weapons that were used, clothes that were worn, and drawings of the Tipu and his family. There were also plaques with pictures that described the history of the family and wars that were fought. I love walking through these kinds of museums, it’s crazy to think that people lived there centuries ago.
We then drove to Sriranganatha Temple which was another 10 minutes away so not too far driving. This temple didn’t open until 4 and we got there about 40 minutes early so we just waited in the car because it started pouting down rain. Luckily, by the time the temple opened it stopped raining. The Sriranganatha Temple is dedicated to the Hindu god Ranganatha (a reincarnation of god Vishnu). This is one in five temples and therefore is also called Adi Ranga, First Ranga that is upstream of the river Kaveri. Again, the detail on the front of the temple was gorgeous, the color also looked almost gold in person. We started to wait in line at about 3:50pm, it was a little bit of a line, well it wasn’t really a line, more like a mob of people packed together. There are no such things as line here, you just have to squeeze your way through. We didn’t mind being in the clump of people because there was a large group of people that brought musical instruments and were playing some Hindu music that was meant to worship the god, I believe. It was like a real life musical haha not lying. The group of people would start and then everyone around us would also sing along with them. When we got inside the singing got even more crazy! The temple made the music echo and become louder, the group of people were also getting really into it. They were dancing and jumping, it was really fun to watch. It was repeating words and phrases so I caught on a little bit so I just sang (more like mumbled) along with everyone. We were able to take prayers and admire the interior of the temple. The temple itself was very beautiful from the outside. The interior was just of stone, not too much detail, but it had a great ambiance. I also really like taking prayer here in temples, it is so peaceful and you can just feel the energy. It was a great experience, I recommend to go when the musical people are there, but I don’t know when they go, we were just lucky I guess.
Mahalo,
Maddie
Life in Mysore, India 