MYSORE

I got back last night from a weekend in Mysore. It was really fun, except for the heat! It seems as though everywhere I have been in India so far has been much hotter and more humid than Bangalore, which makes me so happy to be living in Bangalore.

We left at 6am on Saturday for Mysore. We had 1 bus and 2 big vans for all of us. About half way we stopped to eat breakfast at this buffet, it was decent. There was this one food item they put on my plate that looked like a mini funnel cake, except it was hard-like and kind of crystallized. It tasted like deep fried sugar! I am beginning to realize that a lot of the food here is not that healthy!

After breakfast we drove into Mysore and went to our hotel. The hotel we stayed at was really nice and the showers had hot water (which seems to be rare). That evening we went to this huge garden. Just as we got there it started pouring rain.. of course only a few of us had umbrella's so we had to suck it up. There was thunder and lightning for the rest of the night.. but once the rain stopped we began to walk through the garden. It had a ton of fountains and was lit up in all different colors. It was really pretty! I thought we were finished after we walked through, but then we got in line for a boat ride! As we were waiting in line I noticed that bugs were surrounding me. There were moths EVERYWHERE. I have never seen so many bugs.. when you looked towards the light it looked foggy, but really it was just a billion bugs. We finally got on the boat and drove away from the light (thank goodness) and then got off on the other side of the pond/lake thing. Once we got there we watched a water show with music. It was colorfully lit up fountains dancing to the beat of the music. After that we went back to the hotel and ate dinner on the roof. From there we could see in the distance a palace lit up! It was nice :)

The next day we drove around, saw some monuments, and went into a Hindu temple (we have been in about 3 trillion Hindu temples so far, and I think I'll be okay if I don't have to go into another one. They can be a pain in the butt because we have to take our shoes off, and I really don't like having dirty feet). For lunch our Director, Jacob, suprised us and we got to eat lunch inside an old palace (which is now a 5 Star Hotel). We got a tour of the palace/hotel and saw the inside of one of the hotel rooms (750 US$ per night) and then ate a wonderful meal in a beautiful room! Mmmm.. the best food I've had so far. Jacob said we got to eat like Princes and Princesses.

We then went to another very old palace and took a tour of it. After the tour we rode Elephants around the palace grounds. It was cool, but kind of scary, those things are huge!

The only thing annoying about going to Touristy areas are the Indian Tourists.. They love staring and white people and taking pictures with us. People wanting pictures of me was beginning to get annoying so I told the next man who asked me if he would pay me 100 Rupees for a picture, we laughed and took the picture anyway. Although, I think I really could make some money doing that...

गूद्ब्ये फॉर नो! <--- "Goodbye for now!" in Hindi