Tag: mysore

Like a kid in a sweetie shop – burfi, barfi, borfi

There I was, like a kid in a sweetie shop…literally. (I still have my schoolboy humour, I’m hanging on to my youth!).

I’d been meaning to try out some proper Indian sweets since our burfi snack (on the train journey on the shatabdi from Amritsar on the Monsoon Meandering trip in 2011) but the right time had never arrived. With a couple of hours to kill until our train departed from Mysore I set off to Adyar Ananda Bhavan Sweets which we passed just before arriving at the station.

This place was huge and the array of sweets mind-boggling, plus being a restaurant it was really busy.

The server asked me what I wanted, I had no clue, what were all these beauties in front of me, what charms awaited – see the next post – and realistically how much should I buy?

I’d only really tried Burfi before, twice in fact, once in Alwar in 2009 on the Big Cats and Holy Ghats trip, and once on that shatabdi train in 2011. It was obvious that I’d have to get a couple of pieces of different burfis, but what else?

What would you order if presented with this?

Kev gets a new job in India

I’m not one to really have a bucket list, I either do it, plan to do it soon or shut up about it…well for most things.

There was one thing though… I’ve always fancied driving an autorickshaw / tuk-tuk.

Well, today I got the chance.

Yesterday we got an autorickshaw from our hotel in Mysore for Rs70 (I gave him Rs100, that’s £1.15) with a driver named Pappu, well I think that’s what he said. Pappu was very informative on the way, pointing out places and when we arrived at KR Circle, the happening place in the center of town, he gave us lots of warnings about scams and how to be careful. We liked Pappu. He asked if he could drive us around all day for today, total cost Rs500. Without even trying to bargain him down from £6 (for all day!) I agreed.

Our second stop today was at the huge Lalita Mahal Palace and after some lunch I went outside to photograph the building whilst Jane and Amy went to view the Viceroy’s suite. They looked out of the window and saw Pappu driving around and around the large empty driveway and parking area in front of the hotel.

Except it wasn’t Pappu, it was me, he was teaching me to drive his tuk-tuk. I had purposefully engineered the situation, asking him how difficult it was to drive, “I used to have a motorbike, the throttle and brake are the same”, “ah does the left grip control the gears and the lever is for the clutch?”. Pappu said “come on, sit here, I’ll show you”.


That’s me in front of our own small hotel, the Green Hotel, which is rather lovely.

This was seriously good fun, I loved it.

And here’s the video:

Mysuru accommodation – Green Hotel

Rs3000 £36
Our accommodation in Mysuru, or Mysore as I like to call it, is the Green Hotel, a restored palace originally built for Mysore’s princesses and now run as a not-for-profit hotel. It’s just beautiful to look at and very much reminds me of the Jagat Niwas we stayed at in Udaipur back in 2009. Rated 22nd out of 101 hotels in Mysore on TripAdvisor, it also gets 4 out of 5 with over 330 reviews.