1st Leg - Vellore, Bangalore, Mysore

All the ‘ores’.

Even a GPS doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make it to your destination without obligatory u-turns. We missed our first stop-point by about 20 km’s and we only had to navigate one straight freeway from Chennai!

One of the first things we noticed as we embarked on our driving adventure was the number of universities in India. The majority seem to be engineering colleges or universities, namely IT institutions, or medical training centers. India is certainly an IT epicenter.



Before leaving Vellore we visited the Round Table Factory for Disabled Women which was a great testament to Round Table as the women seemed very happy and welcomed our visit.

Leaving Vellore we pulled our rickshaw in at a small village with a yellow temple to take a few photos. Even before the first photo had been taken Mel had made friends with a little girl, her mother and small brother - who promptly took her off to visit the rest of the village and take photos of each and every family cow. Cows are very important to an Indian family!

At the small village we were a spectacle of intrigue as many more villagers came to greet us and although no one spoke English we were kindly provided with refreshments and invited to take each family’s portrait, with their cows of course!

Small village looking at us, looking at them, looking at us


Villager portraits


Next adventure was reaching Bangalore at rush hour as the sun went down – first real experience of chaotic Indian traffic – very entertaining if not a tad stressful. Joining heavy traffic and racing down half completed roads, trying to avoid collision, reading a hand drawn map, and trying to ask locals for directions, simultaneously felt like mission impossible, especially as the school was in a small back lot in an equally small suburb. Key learning’s here were a) most Indian’s can’t read maps, b) don’t assume the Indian map was correctly drawn in the first place, c) if an Indian says go left keep an eye on their hand signal as they probably meant go right, d) always ask several people for directions (at least 5) and go with the majority vote, though that might not be right either! Thanks have to go to the head master that spotted us and chased us down on his motorbike – others were not so fortunate and were left driving around and around….and around…. for hours!

Bangalore rush hour


Leaving Bangalore the next day should have been relatively straight forward, as we’d been told by a government representative to take the toll roads to Mysore – “just go right at the ‘circle’” (that means roundabout). 3 u-turns later we found the new road but also found that 3 wheelers were not permitted. After some negotiation and lots of pleasantries and smiles we negotiated our passage out of town the faster route. Unfortunately we only made it so far before being banished back to the long route by a mean government representative. When you only travel at around 30 km’s an hour on average every advantage counts!

Overall the trip had been very enjoyable and a real eye opener to the beauty of the Indian countryside and anarchy of city life. Both Vellore and Mysore are quite pretty towns by Indian standards with lots of white colonial style buildings and not too over populated. Vellore has a beautiful 16th century granite fort and Mysore has a palace with amazing interiors including a wooden elephant ‘howdah’ decorated in solid gold. Mysore also seemed to be a popular destination for Indian holiday makers too.

Vellore skyline at sunset