Weekend Trip to Mysore

Jody and I decided to take a 2.5 hour bus ride to Mysore for the weekend. The girls were sad to see us go, but Mysore had some pretty neat stuff that us tourists wanted to see...

Friday- We left the home after weaving another bed for the girls. Patma took us to the bus stand because she was going home due to the election in India right now. Don't ask me anything about this election because I am just as clueless as you are, or maybe even more so. The bus was a standard bus. I sat with this old, indian woman who thought my black painted nails were the definition of hilarity. After about 2 stops the bus was packed full. And i have seen packed buses, but this one was PACKED. i had crotch in my face, a mans gut on my shoulder, the woman beside me kept pushing the men's bums to give us some room. Also the lady behind me kept touching my hair. It was just weird. But, India is the country of random so such is life. We arrived in mysore and tried to sign into our hotel. Jody and i both left our passports in kollegal (yes, we realize now that this is very stupid) so we couldn't check in anywhere. We were on our way to find the internet to get some phone numbers and see if we could print off a copy of jody's passport when we met our mini savior parootie. He took us to the internet, found us a hotel room and took us around the town for a little tour. all for free. we offered to buy him super but he said all he wanted was a bottle of coca cola. easy enough. Jody and I headed out for some veg. tali (a veg/rice plate) at hotel RRR. This tali came with 14 sauces! can you imagine!! FOURTEEN sauces! who would ever need FOURTEEN SAUCES!?! And unlimited rice. wow. i ate well, and all for 47 rbs. ($1.25 about) WOW. This restaurant didn't serve chai.. what kind of place in india doesn't serve chai? So we headed down the main strip to find some tea. On the way jody was distracted by some glasses. so we stopped and ended up each buying a pair. i made mine prescription! they are so 80's! SO FUNNY. i just love them. these are the kind of impulse buys you wonder about later. but, right now i am in love with them.
Saturday- Our adventure started at 8am on the streets of mysore. We headed to the market. Jody bought some gifts for her cousin, and some make up. I bought my bindi dots and some bangles. This man came up to me and said, "you smell good, I want you." Times like these i want to be around canadian men. Another young man lured us into his oil shop and we probably spent a good hour there, testing oils, and they even brought us tea! we ended up buying some then searching the rest of the markets. I bought some hair dye and jody dyed my hair. It wasn't dark enough to cover all the blond so my hair is a little grey right now. so funny. we are doing dye number two today. it is fine and all, but i would rather give it another go. For the evening we took a 2 hour bus ride to see the ever famous mysore, musical fountains. Basically it is a fair type feel where people sell food and what not. then you pay to go watch this fountain and lights dance to music. All this Indian music was playing and then out of no where BOOM BOOM from Venga boys comes on.. WHAT?! of all the american songs in the world they pick this one? haha. SO FUNNY. We walked around the gardens, took some "peace, love" pics, due to our glasses and indian sweaters. It was a really fun evening. I tried some Gobi Manchuri (which is deep fried cauliflower) It was spicy and very interesting. Good, I liked it. The bus home we were standing. I was standing behind this man who insisted on "letting them rip" for a good half hour. GOOD. GOOD. As if sweaty bus BO wasn't enough. We ended our evening with some reading and chatting.
Sunday(today!)- We woke up and went to our favorite cafe here. It's only our favorite because we know it serves tea, and it's close the hotel.. they are probably sick of seeing us there actually. We both ate idly and had some chai. Then off to the palace! For foreigners it costs 100rbs, and for natives... 20rbs! AS IF THEY CAN DO THIS TO US! imagine trying to pull this off in canada? you are kidding me! Inside the view was beautiful. We walked around outside the palace and enjoyed the architecture. we were amazed by this beautiful golden door and decided to take some pictures near it. All of a sudden we hear this HUGE bang and a sizzle. The temple lights went on and one of the light bulbs realllllllllly close to us exploded! AAAAH! (there were no injuries during the making of this photo) The whole trip i have been looking for an elephant ride so we are leisurely turning a corner and guess what we see? Camels! I was taking some pictures and then we kept walking.. and we see an... ELEPHANT! the man asked us if we wanted rides! I had really given up on this adventure about 2 weeks ago! So we got charged 100rbs (instead of the native 50rbs) and took a 5 minute ride. THEN we had a 10rbs camel ride! it was really fun. The men took pics of us, and boy did they take pics. Of course they wanted a tip, but we didn't have any change. Then we entered the palace. The art work was really elaborate and the arches very interesting. no photos allowed though. They had the most beautiful statue lights I have ever seen. I can't imagine living in such luxury! (and sometimes such gaudiness) Now we are just at the cafe, killing sometime before our bus leaves. We'll probably do dye number two today so i will no longer feel like a mini granny. tee hee.
* I've also tried some new treats (indian sweets are very gross actually) and some dried dates this weekend. yum. i love indian food!

That's my life as of now. Keep the emails coming. God bless.