DAY IN MYSORE

Had quite a good night's sleep though it was very hot and we lose wifi at night so sorry folks who like to contact us at night at the moment.

We had an early breakfast and caught a tuktuk into town to Mysore Palace which is a huge place where apparently the current maharajah still lives with his family in 25% of the building.

Unfortunately no pics allowed inside but if you know the best rooms in Brighton Pavillion - double the opulence and that's Mysore.  The central Durbar halls and conference rooms and balcony facing the town is so huge and all beautifully painted - the bulbous pillars are all cast iron and painted in rich colours and the stained glass roof of one of the main halls was breathtaking with peacocks and birds etc- amazing.

In the gardens 2 chaps were cutting the grass with the funniest electric mower - why they didn't just get a hover I don't know...  We also saw 2 elephants with simple howdas on for tourist rides, but Moira wasn't her usual self today so she declined the ride.

Then we walked to the ancient fruit and veg market (Devaraja market) built by the late great Tipu Sultan and as you walked through the front entrance you were overpowered by the smell of fresh flowers where the men and women had strung up endless coils of garlands that the girls wear in their hair and faithful take to the temple as offerings - there were also whole halls of every type of banana and we bought some red ones and some little fat yellow ones - the flavour is amazing.

Now, as I mentioned before, Moira was not feeling too well as we walked around the palace and as we approached the bazaar she suddenly felt an urgent need for a loo - and sods' law said there would be not one to be seen.  John rushed into a hotel and we begged, but they threw us out - by now Moira was thinking she'd have to go in the gutter - they pointed us to a loo down the next road that we eventually found, but the man would not let Moira in - by now we were desperate - anyway ... it turned out his nodding meant it was occupied and he called us in - so it all ended happy ever after - thank goodness.

We cut short our bazaar trip after that and caught a tuktuk out of town to the Lalitha Mahal Palace which was built by the Maharajah to house his foreign guests - not bad as guest houses go - we read you could lunch there - so we had a drink in the bar

/then John and I had a 'silver Thali' meal for the princely sum of £4.80 for two and we ate in comfort in the huge dining hall decorated in wedgewood blue - we 3 and another couple were the only guests in the whole enormous palace today... I had to order a cocktail - a Tom Collins which sent me quite squiffy and I had to recover with a swift walk around the garden before falling into the tuktuk home.  A good test of how drunk you are is to try to say Sriringa Patnam convincingly - and John was not convinced!

The gardens were beautiful and there was a swimming pool at the back just waiting to be swum in - sadly no cosies with us- so with a heavy heart we returned home for an afternoon nap and internet surf to you guys.  

The doorman was telling us about how the English magician came with the BBC (Paul Daniels) to stay once and he showed us a copy of the newspaper article in the UK - the doorman made his own musical instruments and did magic tricks so he shared a few with Paul Daniels, which he liked!  

Got sucked into a couple of hotel shops where it felt like a customer had not entered for an age - you have to feel sorry for them just waiting in case a guest checks in...  

anyway it was a lovely relaxing lunchtime and Moira looked much better for it and is sleeping peacefully now... in our little rooftop home from home.

In the Lalitha palace John found some etchings and descriptions of Wellington's battle at Sriringa Patnam so he was elated - I think we will travel there tomorrow about 20km out of Mysore with a taxi.