The 10-day Dasara celebration in Mysore culminates in a torchlight parade, at the end of which the skies erupt in a spectacular show of fireworks. This, in effect, signals the end of the peak tourist season here. Mysore goes back to being a ‘weekend break’ from Bangalore or a stopover en route to other places on the tourist trail in South India. But a company called Royal Mysore Walks (RMW) believes there’s more to the city than its annual apogee.

I meet Vinay Nagaraju, who, along with Vinay Parameswarappa started the outfit in 2009 to provide offbeat cultural experiences related to the history of their hometown. He says, “History need not be about dates, it can be about stories. We provide an intimate introduction to Mysore that goes beyond what you read on the internet or are told by a tourist guide. Do you know, for instance, why there’s a painting in one of the NASA facilities depicting the Anglo-Mysore Wars?”

While I resist the urge to look it up on the internet (where, as it happens, one can now find the answer), Nagaraju narrates an example of how history well told, and trivia, can bring alive any place. “Let’s say you visit the Mysore Palace. It is just a structure whose details you can easily look up online. But what if I told you that a Hollywood star was born and brought up close to the palace? Did you know that there is a sixth-generation stone carver whose family has worked on more than 60 idols for the Palace of Mysore? Or the fact that there are connections between Mysore and the American War of Independence and the French Revolution? It’s these connections that matter.”

RMW offers a handful of open tours. The Royal Walk in the morning links the city’s regal and colonial past with events that happened halfway across the world and also includes a tour of the 125-year-old Devaraja Market, abuzz at that hour with stalls of flowers, fruits and vegetables. It also has an exclusive Market Walk. The Food Tour tackles questions like how Mysore pak got its name, between mouthfuls of many such local delicacies. The Elements Tour is a combination of the Royal Walk, the Market Walk and the Food Tour, and goes on for a little over three hours. Besides these, there are special walks conducted during Dasara, like the Night Tour, which takes one through the city, resplendent in its illuminated glory.

Personalised private tours are available too. The company created one for Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. It tailored another interesting tour for a client who was putting together a coffee-table book on dying professions. “We met about 10 or 12 people who are still in ancient professions, like a palmist, a duplicate key maker and a Kole Basava artiste, who accompanies a bedecked bull door-to-door.”

While the name suggests that RMW only conducts walks, its repertoire includes cycle tours; although the tour that seems to have caught the fancy of younger travellers is the one in an open-top vintage 1973 jeep.

“Social media is where most of the younger crowd is, but there are also a lot of people who simply don’t access it, and are just as interested in travel,” says Nagaraju, “We’ve always believed that there has to be a fair mix of traditional media and social media to get our name out into the world. Our brochures and tent cards are displayed at some of the top hotels of Mysore which recommend us.”

Nagaraju leads the team in the absence of Parameswarappa, who is currently on a hiatus — they are both fulltime employees, as are the others on the team. A foodie, Nagaraju is an engineer by training, while two of his colleagues are architects and theatre artists. “Every person on the team is equally capable of leading all our tours. We are all passionate about different things but what binds us together is our love for history, for Mysore and for people.”

But how does the company sustain its business beyond Dasara? “From November to March, we are busy with individual travellers from India and abroad. From March to June, when schools have summer holidays, we have more Indian tourists,” says Nagaraju.

Besides, Mysore is usually preferred by corporates in Bangalore for offsites — often held in the shoulder seasons. “Our corporate training activities are built around the history of Mysore. There’s not much difference between a corporate team-building activity and a war. So we try to emulate the same ideas, strategies and ideologies,” says Nagaraju. For children, it’s about learning history in context. If they want to know about the War of Srirangapatna, for example, RMW creates a treasure hunt around it.

Five years after they started, do they see RMW expanding? “We do a little bit of Srirangapatna and a few tours to Bylakuppe, but as of now, we haven’t expanded geographically. Hopefully, somewhere down the line, we may do that but as of now we are happy, right here in Mysore.”

It’s time to wind up and I’m still wondering what connects that NASA painting with Karnataka, when Nagaraju relents, and says, “Tipu Sultan is considered by many, including the space exploration agency, as the father of modern rocket technology — he created and used this form of weaponry to fight the British.” But to know the futurist that Tipu really was, I’ll have to go to war or at least, go to the battlefield with RMW.

(Saritha Rao Rayachoti is a Chennai-based writer.)

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