fake festivals in Mysore?

picklepak

Had an interesting conversation with an incense shopkeeper in Mysore today. We were chatting for a while, and then said out of the blue that he's heard of a few instances around town of people going up to foreigners trying to direct them to, "the festival," making up some fake name of a festival that doesn't exist. Hmm, a festival in India? That seems to happen every day, somewhere around the country.

Well, so many festivals in India sometimes you might not have read about one, so you go and follow... apparently a few people have been robbed in the alleys here. I find that surprising as I have a real positive vibe about Mysore and hope to stay here for about a week, but I thought I'd post this message here anyway.

I'd be surprised to hear if this is common across India (an otherwise mostly non-violent place, in my opinion). Comments?

steven_ber

when i was in mysore (jan 2001) around 10 pm, i was a little drunk (makes a change) and a man started a conversation with me, he was very informative and quite funny.

showing me a few places around the pallace i suddenly noticed a van accross the road and the man making signals to the van, as i was still new to india i thought it was just me being parranoid.

these signals became more apparent and the mans mood seemed to change to the point were i pushed him to the ground and ran like hell, very closly followed by the van and the man now on a motorbike.

other than that, mysore was wonderfull, and i would'nt wander alone drunk in london or new york, so why mysore?