Mysore

The name comes from Mahishasura, the buffalo demon of the legend in which the goddess Chamundeshwari kills him on the hill above the city, and the site was a small fortified settlement under the Vijayanagara empire when the Wodeyar family established themselves there in the fourteenth century as local chiefs. After Vijayanagara collapsed in 1565 the Wodeyars expanded their territory, moving their capital between Mysore and the river island of Srirangapatna, which was easier to defend.

In the 1760s power passed to Hyder Ali, a commander in the Mysore army, and then to his son Tipu Sultan, who modernised the state's forces, fought four wars against the British and their allies, and died defending Srirangapatna in 1799. The British restored a child Wodeyar to a reduced princely state, administered it directly for half a century, and returned it to the family in 1881. Mysore then became known as one of the best-run states in India: Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV and his dewans, among them M. Visvesvaraya, built the Krishnaraja Sagara dam, hydroelectric power, a university founded in 1916, and railways, while the palace that had burned in 1897 was rebuilt in Indo-Saracenic style by Henry Irwin.

After independence the maharaja became the state's governor, and in 1956 the enlarged Kannada-speaking state, renamed Karnataka in 1973, took Bengaluru as its capital. Mysore kept the palaces, the institutions and the Dasara festival, and grew into a mid-sized city of industry, education and tourism. The official spelling of the name became Mysuru in 2014.

The court set the cultural tone and much of it survives. The Mysore school of painting, with its gold leaf and gesso work, the Mysore style of Carnatic music and the Wodeyars' patronage of dance and scholarship all descend from the palace, and the Dasara festival remains the clearest expression of that inheritance: nine nights of concerts and lights followed by the Jamboo Savari, a procession in which a decorated elephant carries the golden howdah bearing the image of Chamundeshwari through streets lined with crowds.

Craft is the city's other identity. Mysore silk saris woven with gold-thread borders are made at a state factory in the city, and sandalwood, distilled here for oil and carved into boxes and figures, has been associated with Mysore for so long that the state tree gives its name to the film industry of Karnataka. Rosewood inlay and incense are made in the same workshops.

Mysore is also a world centre of yoga. Tirumalai Krishnamacharya taught in the palace under the maharaja's patronage in the twentieth century, and his student K. Pattabhi Jois developed the ashtanga method here; students from many countries now live for months at a time in Gokulam. Everyday manners are those of small-city Karnataka: Kannada greetings, shoes left at the door, temple visits at dawn and dusk, and a slower pace than Bengaluru, which residents mention with satisfaction.

About a million people live in the city and some 1.3 million in its wider metropolitan area, which makes it Karnataka's second-largest urban area and a fraction of the size of Bengaluru, and the difference in pace is the first thing visitors notice. The economy rests on tourism, on education — the University of Mysore and a long list of colleges and research institutes draw students from across the state — and on industry in the estates on the edges of town, where software services, engineering, printing and food processing sit alongside the older silk and sandalwood works.

The planned layout shapes daily life: numbered residential stages such as Saraswathipuram, Vijayanagar and Kuvempunagar, each with its park, temple, school and row of shops, spread out from the palace and the market at the centre. Rents and house prices have risen as commuters and retirees from Bengaluru have moved in, helped by the expressway.

Mornings begin early with walks around Kukkarahalli or Karanji lake, filter coffee and a tiffin breakfast; offices and shops close for a long lunch; evenings bring families to the palace lights, the parks and the cinemas. Water supply from the Kaveri, traffic growing on roads not built for it, and pressure on the city's lakes and tree cover are the issues most often discussed, along with how far the city should follow Bengaluru's path.

Mysore's kitchens are mainly vegetarian and southern, built on rice, lentils, coconut and curry leaves. The Mysore masala dosa is the dish most associated with the city — a crisp fermented crêpe spread inside with a red chilli-and-garlic paste and folded over spiced potato — but the local favourite is the softer, butter-laden dosa served in a handful of old family cafés with nothing but white coconut chutney. Idli, vada, uppittu and the rice-and-lentil dish bisi bele bath fill out the breakfast and snack menus, and lunch is a rice meal with sambar, rasam, vegetable palya, curd and pickle, often eaten from a banana leaf.

The sweet that carries the city's name is Mysore pak, made from gram flour, sugar and a great deal of ghee, cooked until it sets either crumbly or soft; it is said to have been invented in the palace kitchens for Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV. Other sweets include chiroti, flaky layered pastry dusted with sugar and served with thickened milk, and obbattu or holige, a flatbread stuffed with jaggery and lentil or coconut filling, made at festivals. Coffee, grown in the hills of Kodagu and Chikmagalur to the west, is drunk as filter kaapi, poured back and forth between a tumbler and a small bowl to raise a froth.

Non-vegetarian cooking is present but quieter: the Mysore style of mutton curry and pulao, biryani in the Muslim quarters, and roadside grills. Street food runs to bondas, bhajji, masala puri and hot jalebi, and Devaraja Market supplies the flowers, fruit and jaggery that the home kitchens work with.