Trip to Mysore

On Sunday, June 12 2011, I did a trip to Mysore together with a group of Indian College students and some other non-Indian colleagues from NCBS. After the photos, some text will follow below...

Trip to Mysore

The trip started on Sunday morning at 5.00 am at the NCBS. We (Ulrike, Yoka, Ben, Michel and me, i.e. the white ones) were picked from bus which was chartered for the tour. We continued to the hostel of the college student girls, who organized this trip to celebrate their successful end of their scholar year. Then the trip from Bangalore to Mysore started. It was nice to see the sun rising, how the landscape changed once we have got out of the town, and to listen to all the songs that the girls sang the whole three hours drive (150 km)! I think it was mainly bolly-wood songs. After a tasty Dosa in a restaurant at the highway, we started our cultural program with the visit of Sultan Tipu's Mausoleum. It is a nice example of islamic architecture, with its typical garden surrounding the main building.

Then, we passed by Saint Philomena Cathedral, which was constructed in 1956. Later, I learned to my surprise that its was designed by a French reverend who was inspired by the Cologne dome. Since it was a Sunday, the place was quite busy, but I did not feel that impressed as I am in European churches, maybe because it was such a young church. At the corner in front of the cathedral was a shop with Indian handcrafts, i.e. wooden carvings and nice fabrics, and I got there a nice little elephant of sandal-wood. He smells fine.

Next stop was the Mysore Palace, what an impressive and beautiful building. After the wooden palace burned down at the end of the 19th century, it was rebuild in stone. This construction took about 15 years, but included electrical light, and lifts, beautiful wall paintings, stone and wooden carvings, and everywhere glazed tiles in flower styles (like it is typical for Islamic art). This visit was worth the entrance fee of 200 INR for foreigners (40 INR for Indian citizens), and besides the palace, there were a few temples, a nice garden, and Elephants! We white people had a quite special experience at the end of the palace visit. We were just strolling through the garden for a last time, and reached an area where no visitors walked around. But we thought nothing special about it, because it had rained just before. Then, a guardian approached us, telling that we should go back because it is the private area of the Maharadja (Yes, the royal family is still living in a part of the palace). After he had asked us, from where we are, he changed his mind and led us to the royal Elephant compound...and we could even climb on the Elephants for a photo shooting! Sure, after that, each of us had to pay 200 INR to the guardian and to the elephant keeper. But that was ok, because the feeling to sit directly on the elephants neck without any seat, to feel the thick skin with the bristly hair, and this special view from 2.5m above the ground, were worth it!

After a short lunch break, we drove with the bus outside Mysore to get on top of one of the surrounding hills, the location of a huge temple complex. It was a really high tower with nice gods on the outside defending and protecting the god inside the temple, but my attraction was kept by the small apes which populated the whole area. Second best thing was the view over the plains and over Mysore.

After hardly one hour at that place we again went on with the bus to reach Brindavan Gardens, our last destination around Mysore (it was already 6pm). This garden lays at a huge dam and a part of the backed-up water is used to aliment a number of fountains. This place was a real weekend travelers magnet, and although the day was almost over, the park was full of families, couples, single persons. The way from the parking slot of the bus to the park was seamed with small food stands, and I tasted a red deep-fried fish, which could be eaten entirely, a good spiced masala tea and some chat (a mix of puff rice, diced onions, tomatoes, carrotsand some spicy sauce).
With all these impressions of the day, we went back to Bangalore, and this time, the group was much calmer than at the morning. we arrived at NCBS at 1am, and I was in bed around 2.30 am. Not much sleep before the beginning of the "working week", but who cares!

NCBS selections

Sorry for the late post, but my days get more and more packed with activities...

May 20-23, the NCBS ran interviews to select new PhD candidates for the upcoming academic year, and I was involved as a volunteer to accompany and to help the candidates. That gave me a good opportunity to learn more about the NCBS (get into touch with the other volunteers and the professors) and about the different places in India from which the candidates came.
The candidates selected for the interviews (120 out of 6000 applications!) were split to 5 panels, each panel consisted of three professors. In this first oral selection round, each candidate had an interview of 20 min (in total interviews took about 1.5 days). 44 from 120 were selected for the second and final interview round, in which the interview lasted for 50 min in front of a new panel of three professors (another 1.5 days). The interviews ended on a friday afternoon, and the candidates could check on saturday morning, who was one of the lucky to be selected. Finally, ten candidates made it (i.e. a selection rate of 10/6000 = 0.0017 = 0.17% !).


During the whole procedure, the participants had a great catering for lunch and coffe/tea breaks, and on saturday noon all candidates of the 2nd round were invited to a lunch together with the faculty. During this saturday lunch, I discussed with some of the professors about the interviews and the selection procedure. In the 1st round interviews, candidates were asked general questions about biology, mathematics/logics, physics. But the the professors did not care about precise values or explanations learned by heart. They were interested in the candidates capabilities to explore an indea, to reason and to argue. The second round of interviews was more concentrated to the research proposal that the candidates had written in their application. Again, the questions were not about knowing established things, but about how the candidate wants to explore and realize his project. What could they imagine to do, how to encounter problems, how to proceed if the research aim is accomplished?
Regarding the big number of candidates and the little number of accepted people, I asked whether the selection is difficult or not. Interestingly, the professors told me that it is not too difficult to identify the special/ interesting candidates they are looking for. There is also no strict limitation, how many candidates can be accepted. In the previous selection, finally 20 people were selected.
I think, I understand better now, what kind of place the NCBS is. I like their philosophy not to select candidates for a specific project, but for the NCBS (the candidates visit at least three labs before deciding what to do). The people here all went through such a selection process, which explains the high number of excellent, interesting and free minded fellows. And corresponding to the comments of many candidates and professors, there are not many other Indian institutes with this concept.


The candidates came from all over India, some of them had a train trip of two days (trains are not very fast in India, even a fast train has an average speed of 70 km/h), and some were accompanied by their parents which had to wait all the time in the main hall. To distract and to calm the candidates before the interviews, I chatted with them. Like this, I could get impressions of several places in India, which sites I have to visit, what kind of food they have etc. Some even thought about a PhD in Germany and asked me about the live there. From the selected ones, I had the pleasure to talk to two of them during the procedure, but I hope that the others which were not selected will find good places for their PhD, too.