After a quick nap, we’d planned to spend time at Mysore Palace followed by spending the afternoon at the bazaar until 2 random (separate) people on the street told us of a better plan… Apparently the palace is really busy in a morning so we were advised to head to the markets first and back to the palace after lunch. One man even put us in a tuk tuk (I don’t think he was on commission but he did tell us about his thriving business selling green plants!) and gave the driver exact instructions of where to take us and how much we would pay! The Tuk Tuk driver had a helper who spoke great English and the 2 of them acted as our tour guides for the next 2 hours – it was great, for 110 rupees we had a guided tour of the real Mysore, first stopping at a market for locals – not the huge touristy bazaars but one with fresh fruit and veg, flowers, kumkum (the powder used for hindi dots), spices and even a fish and butchers section – they slaughter the animals early in a morning and then cut them up into pieces to sell right there at the market throughout the day.
Next stop…wood carving and herbal cigarette making! Matt even had a go, he wasn’t very good though… (The man with the crazy vest tan lines just kept laughing at him)
We made it to Mysore Palace, and spent about an hour looking around the rather impressive museum inside. We wandered around the grounds a little bit because we were told the gardens were impressive…we must be used to amazing gardens at home because apart from a few rose bushes there were just random patches of scorched grass…maybe we were there in the wrong season! I got politely asked by a young girl if she could have a picture taken with me (obviously they don’t see too many people so pale around there!), I agreed but was soon mobbed by the rest of her siblings!
That evening we decided to head to Chamundi hill for sunset, unfortunately the sky had clouded over a bit so the sunset wasn’t so great but we still had a nice time looking in the temple at the top of the hill and watching the world (and cows) go by…
We queued (read: pushed and shoved) for the bus back to Mysore centre to get back to the hotel and witnessed a fairly vibrant show of passion that Indians seem to have for saving seats! A single flip flop had been placed on a seat through an open window, obviously, the owner of said flip flop deemed this enough to reserve the seat…the old man with crooked back and walking stick though differently so moved the flip flop and sat down…then all hell broke loose! What started off as a little bit of shouting soon turned into at least half of the bus chipping in, at which point we got off the bus until it settled down… We got chatting to a few school kids outside the bus, it was good to know that they didn’t really have a clue what was going on either.
We finally got back on the bus, standing room only and took the 20 minute ride to the town centre….the heavens decided to open as we pulled into the bus station. We hung around for about 10minutes but decided that it wasn’t letting up but we were hungry so hailed a TukTuk and clambered onto the wet seats (there was no point in bartering because the rain was so bad that he could charge whatever he wanted). He drove the most direct route, with least water (read: resistance) but the rain had meant that the roads had turned to rivers (the pictures don’t really do it justice but a good try – so thankful that the camera is waterproof!). We got back to the hotel resembling drowned rats and went for our old faithful Paneer Butter Masala…all better! 
