Day Bengaluru gave me more than I could ask

Yogesh Sarkar

Administrator
While photographing the Palace from outside, security guard told me to first get the ticket, before doing photography, so I walked inside the Palace and went to the ticket counter and got a real shock on seeing pricing for the tickets!

Indian Citizen had to pay Rs. 230 each as entrance fee, while fee for still camera was Rs. 685! There was even a fee for mobile camera, which was around couple of hundred rupees or so. I hesitated for a moment and then handed over Rs. 915 to the ticket seller. Only solace was, entrance fee included audio guide as well. So after depositing my DL as security for the audio guide I took it and started exploring the Bangalore Palace.

While the Palace was quite beautiful, there were certain sections of it which were closed for maintenance, in particular the Royal Durbar, which was the most beautiful place in the entire Palace. Here are a few photographs of the Palace’s interiors.

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Seeing stools made up of elephant legs and a vase made of elephant trunk really saddened me, as much as it was part of our history, I really didn’t wished to see it.

There was a movie or a serial being shot in one of the most beautiful areas of the Palace, so I took a paparazzi shot of it, before moving on.

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When I came out of the Palace, dark clouds were beginning to engulf it and since now I was really thirsty and hungry, I decided to drop my plan of walking all the way to MG Road and instead called a cab. Cab driver while having trouble communicating in Hindi and English was a good fellow and when I asked him about rains, he blamed the unseasonal clouds on Tamil Nadu and both of us got a good laugh out of it.

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He dropped me at MG Road, where I had booked Komfort Terraces through MakeMyTrip, as I had gotten 50% off on hotel booking when booking flight. Room I got was a really small one with not much room apart from bed, but it had AC and other amenities and was comfortable enough.

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I got freshened up and went to Brigade Road in search of food. After walking couple of times up and down on it and even checking out Church Street, I decided to eat at McDonalds. After a better meal than what I had at KFC earlier in the day, I decided to walk to Venkatappa Art Gallery, which was couple of kilometers from Brigade Road. I knew I would be cutting it real close and I might not reach it before its closing time, but I decided to give it a shot anyways. When I did reach the gallery, it was closed, since it was after 5:30pm. So I decided to take photograph of the Government Museum building adjacent to it, which was under renovation but looked superb.

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Then I got a call from Yash Sharma, who wanted to meet me. So I told him to come to Khivraj Bajaj Showroom on Kasturba Road and walked back to it. Few minutes later Yash arrived and we decided to sit at McDonalds next to the showroom and talk.

An hour or so later we moved to Brigade Road and were in for a shock, as pretty much all the good restaurants were closed, since there was a ban on sale of liquor due to elections on 22nd.

So we moved to Matteo Coffee, which was a nice place and had really good coffees. I ordered their Choco Brownie Shake and found it to be quite good. Yash and I talked for couple of hours more, before eventually moving on to Queens Restaurant, which sort of looked like a shady dhaba from outside but had a really nice décor.

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After some yummy veg biryani, it was time to say goodnight to Yash and walk back to my cozy little room for couple of hours of sleep. Before waking up and getting ready for the 6am flight back to Delhi.

After taking a shower and getting ready, I checked out of the room and asked the person at reception whether buses will be available at the moment for airport and he wasn’t sure. So I decided to take cab instead. Uber cab I got cancelled on me, after hearing that I wanted to go to airport, so I called taxi from Taxi4Sure and few minutes later I was on my way to the airport, sort of lost in my thoughts.

Self-checked in at Indigo self-check in booth and walked to Gate no 13 (once again) and waited there for an hour for the boarding to start. Even though I got a window seat, I was just too tired. Not physically, but mentally. So throughout the flight I was in and out of sleep, until I finally landed in Delhi and took a cab home.

While Bengaluru in a way gave me a lot more than what I can write here, there was a part of me, who knew something was now lost and what I hoped to build, would never be the same and will always contain the remanence of what it was initially supposed to be.
 

prajan76

LL.....DL.....TL.....
I was also there at the Bangalore Palace in July, my manager was here and had been taken her to Bangalore Palace.I think the place is good but its overpriced in terms of entry fees and camera fees. We did not take any tickets for phone camera or camera but took pictures on phone. Here are few which i took, one of the elephant leg stools/seats.

This one was taken outside the palace with one of the canons...
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The front view of the palace...

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And the elephant seats.....

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The palace is mostly used for high profile weddings/parties and some local TV channels for shooting their serials etc. When we visited, even that time there was a shooting going on and they were preparing for some wedding next day.
 

prajan76

LL.....DL.....TL.....
Yeah i know and i can relate to it. They have many things stored in a room like a store room and i am sure they can be good to see as well, i could peek from the window but for some reason they are not displaying those items. Hopefully they restore the sections which are closed and include the other items as well.
 

Yogesh Sarkar

Administrator
Fantastic colors dada!! And yea, that close to 1000 bucks fee of the palace is shocking!! :eek:](*,)
Thanks Rajiv.

Yeah i know and i can relate to it. They have many things stored in a room like a store room and i am sure they can be good to see as well, i could peek from the window but for some reason they are not displaying those items. Hopefully they restore the sections which are closed and include the other items as well.
Yes, I had seen that store room. It had a lot of cloths from that era, I guess they may display it at a later stage.
 

Shekar Reddy

Explore India
Wonderful shots YS bhai. We were there during last October but could not visit the palace and museum. fees at Palace seems very high. They are earning quite sums through movie and serial shootings.
 
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