Mysore Palace Walking Tour

By late afternoon the great gates of Mysore Palace have seen a long day. The morning crowds have gone, the marble corridors are quiet, and the sun slides low over the domes, turning the whole building the colour of honey.

This is the hour to see it. The palace you will walk through was built after a fire destroyed the old one in the 1890s, designed by the British architect Henry Irwin for the Wadiyar kings and inaugurated in 1912. Inside, your guide takes you through the halls where the kings held court, so the rooms stop being a gallery of grand things and become the stage of a story you can feel.

Then you walk. Past the palace walls to the Jaganmohan Palace, built in the 1850s and 1860s by a king who had lost his throne, and now home to more than two thousand paintings, including the work of Raja Ravi Varma. Then on to Devaraja Market, where mounds of kumkum glow red and orange, flower sellers string jasmine into garlands, and the air smells of sandalwood and spice.

And at the end, a taste. Legend says Mysore Pak was invented in the palace kitchens, a cook’s improvised mix of gram flour, ghee and sugar that a king asked to have again. You will taste it in the market, a few minutes from where the story began.