Mysore Palace - Part 1

Okay, finally time to give you my Mysore Monday post! I HAVE to post this now because I can't wait to post about where I am staying now: Diva Maldives! Okay, so Monday Drew, another coworker who had just arrived in Bangalore, joined us on our adventure. Also joining us was a member of Drew's Bangalore team, Swanu, and Swanu's family! We left our hotel and went to pick up Praveen on the way. Praveen is from Mysore so he, once again, graciously came along as our guide. Once we got on the road to Mysore, we got great views of outside of Bangalore:

We stopped for breakfast at a cool, outdoor place and tried some more fantastic Indian cuisine

Okay, so I haven't been keeping up with my facts but here's some interesting detail about the road to Mysore...

So, as Mysore is approximately 3 hours from Bangalore, there are obviously cities on the way there. The cool thing is they are all known for something! There is

Ramanagaram, which is known as the Silk city. Below is a picture of a silk market:

Next up, Channapatna. They are known as Toy City complete with many markets with handmade toys most notably small rocking horses which are all over the road.

Followed by Maddur, known as Maddur Vada City. What's Maddur Vada you ask? It is a type of snack made out of dough and then fried. Then we came to Mandya. Mandya is known as the Sugar City as many of the fields are filled with sugar cane and the city is home to the Mysore Sugar Company Ltd. The company is located in the heart of Mandya City. It is one of the oldest sugar factories to be setup in Karnataka (the state in India of which Bangalore is the capital). The final city on our tour is Mysore, known as the Palace City. But first, we stopped just out of Mysore to visit the Summer Palace of Tipu Sultan! More on that in Mysore Palace - Part 2!