MYSORE Tourism, MYSORE Travel Guide
About Mysore
Mysore, a city of gardens and flowering trees, is a major tourist attraction in the state of Karnataka. Though Mysore is close to the industrial city of Bangalore (139 kms), it is a quiet and placid city. Mysore is a representative of grandeur and royalty of the erstwhile Maharajas. Most of the old buildings in Mysore have a royal touch with vaulting archways and majestic domes.
Mysore is very famous for the Dasshera festival that is organized here during September-October, every year. During the festival time, the whole city is filled with light and decorations and on the day of Vijaya Dashmi, he former Maharaja leads a procession through the streets of the city, seated in a golden Howda on an elephant, headed by camels and accompanied by caparisoned elephants, horses, palanquins, silver coaches and standard-bearers with silken banners.
Mysore History
Mysore was the capital of kingdom of Wodeyar dynasty, except the time period of 40 years when Mysore was ruled by Haidar Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. Mysore was also known as Mahishapuram, ruled by the demon Mahishasura, who was killed by Chamundi Devi, whose temple is situated atop the Chamundi hills. During the rule of the Vijayanagara Empire, the Mysore Kingdom under Wodeyars, served as a feudatory. Mysore was the center of the Wodeyar administration till 1610 when Raja Wodeyar ousted the Vijayanagara governor at nearby Srirangapatna and made it his capital. With the demise of the Vijayanagara Empire in 1565, the Mysore Kingdom gradually achieved independence and became a sovereign state by the time of King Narasaraja Wodeyar (1637).
After Tipu Sultan's death in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799, the Kingdom was distributed by the British to their allies of the Fourth Mysore war, the Marhata, Nizam, and State of Travancore, while the rule of Mysore city was retained by the British who built the Government House (completed 1805) In 1831, Mysore lost its status as the administrative centre of the kingdom when Mark Cubbon, the British commissioner, moved the capital to Bangalore.[12] However it regained this status in 1881, when the British handed power back to the Wodeyars.[13] The city remained the capital of the Wodeyars till 1947, with Mysore Palace as the centre of administration.