Notes written with the foreign traveler in mind:

Mysuru offers an excellent opportunity for some historic sightseeing. This page is written for the foreign traveler, and we urge you to plan on a few extra days in the area. Get a tourist visa and take advantage of being in Mysuru and close to some spectacular historic sites.

If you are staying at the Infosys center, Jairam Madhav Rao, the conference center operations chief, has given the foreign visitor a few extra days at the center to pack in some local sightseeing. We also have negotiated rates at a few of the local Mysuru hotels to help extend your stay.

Here are some ideas:

1. Arrive at the BLR Airport on Friday night - which can work out to be the wee hours of Saturday morning. Most international flights arrive at strange hours. Bengaluru (old_name = "Bangalore") has a new international airport that opened earlier this year. The ISSRE 2009 taxi-rideshare service will have a person with a board outside who will coordinate the transportation to Mysuru. Further details on the ride-share logistics will be posted on our BLR-Airport page.
2. Spend Saturday and Sunday relaxing, getting over the jet lag, discovering the Infosys campus riding one of their 3000 bicycles, or whatever. One could also check out Mysuru. Several day trips are possible, or one could plan a trip to some of the historic sights like Belur or Halebid.
3. Monday to Thursday (November 16-19) are the conference days and these will be packed. If the flight departing Bengaluru is in the wee hours of the morning of Friday (Thursday night) it should be possible to make it. However, Thursday may run late, so Friday is good travel date.
4. Friday and Saturday are also good days to do some sightseeing. If you could not come in early on the weekend, plan to get a couple days towards the end of the conference. We need to vacate the campus on the weekend since they have a major group that will start off bright and early the next week.
5. The negotiated rates shown on the Mysuru hotels page offers ISSRE participants some good choices. If one likes a full-service hotel, one can stay there. Or use them to extend our stay before or after the conference to discover Mysuru and southern India. If you are from the US, note that the week following the conference is the US Thanksgiving week - potentially more time to explore. Getting from Bengaluru to Mysuru by taxi is a good 3+ hours. Several international flights arrive and leave in the middle of the night. So, do plan accordingly.

We hope to update this page with more information. If you have questions - write us through the "contact us" page. This way we can produce an FAQ that is useful.

Some historic places that are close

• Halebid and Belur - The whole temple is a stone carving!
• Mysuru Palace
• Brindavan Gardens
• More details to be updated here...

Pictures from Belur, some ~140 Km from Mysuru. Halebid is also close to it.		Pictures - courtsey HR Chandrasekhar.
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Local all-day Taxi rental

A practical way to see places on a day trip, or even a couple day trip is to rent a car (comes with a driver). The daily charges can range Rs 2000-4000 (US$ 50-100) depeding on the car, and total mileage. We will connect with a travel service that will provide us options.

Checkout "Karnataka", "Mysore", "Bangalore" on the Web.

Note that Mysuru is in the state of Karnataka. So search on terms such as Karnataka, Bangalore, Mysore, etc. Here are some interesting sites:
Wikipedia - Belur: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belur
Wikipedia - Halebidu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halebidu
http://www.karnatakatoursandtravel.com/karnataka-travel-guide/mysore-tra...
Kosmix comes up with: Mysuru Bengaluru