Saturday, October 30, 2010

Mysore Trip Set 2 - Mysore Palace - Includes Rare Photos

Our Visit to the Palace

Mr. Raghuraman, who is part of SDM Institute's administration and a person who lived in Mysore for a long time, was nice enough to accompany us in touring around Mysore and had too many information about Mysore to share.


The palace, standing majestically, on that cloudy evening, posing for my Panasonic Lumix TZ3

Though I am a amateur photographer, I am a little fanatic about it and I am crazy about trying to get the best out of my sexy camera.....I was trying out the zoom of my camera and checking its reach - its a 10x optical zoom @ 12 MP, but can be stretched upto 60x @ 5 MP including digital. Trust me it is quite stable even at that zoom, if you are a little used to it....

I shall be increasing the zoom gradually in the next couple of snaps...




The gaurds of the palace..... you should see the carving of their body and the fury in their eyes...... You will thank god that they aren't real.....
Now comes the restricted section I was talking about. Thanks to SDM institute for getting permission to see this room....

There were two part for the room that we went..... Both were completely restricted and provided access on special approval only for high profile visitors......and they clearly said no snaps .....

They made us enter the first room, which was very dark. The guide (a history professor actually) came in and locked the door from inside first....Now the room was pitch dark... only with a very very strong smell of Teak wood & its varnish.

Then he switched on and we were awe struck to see a beautiful armory. It had all kinds of weapons including those of Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali.

They had the original boxing gloves (metal ones with sharp teeths). There was also a pair of weapon which can be contracted and expanded after piercing into someone's body. So, if it is pierced into the enemies stomach, expanded inside the stomach, twisted a little and pulled out.... it will come out with the complete intestinal system......you should see it to believe it......

The entire sealing was made of teak and one person is specially appointed for cleaning and varnishing it at regular intervals. It was shining as it it was only constructed yesterday......

The next room is where all the animals that were hunted by the Honorable Wodeyars were kept. Thankfully, the professor was kind enough to let us take a few snaps here.....

The first one is the head of a elephant, that the king hunted.








This was the pet dog of the wodeyar..... click on it to see it size......