From Masala to Bollywood and everything in between! Catch up with me and my time around South Asia

We’ve just returned from a lovely weekend in Mysore with our school. Mysore is a city with lots of charm and old flavor about 3 hours south west of Bangalore. We began our journey with a visit to the famous Mysore zoo. There we saw all sorts of animals—Giraffes, Monkeys of all sorts, many tigers, some lion at feeding time, but my most favorite animals were the elephants—African and Indian varieties!! You can tell the difference between the two because the African have larger ears and more prominent tusks, while the Indian variety are generally smaller and have smaller ears. We continued our journey to a nearby dam that had a lovely light and water show with all sorts of lovely gardens. Mysore is known for its silks and sandal wood items, so of course we went for some shopping, and I got a great deal on to saris for still less than what Gigi and Stacy each paid for one sari. Needless to say I was very pleased with my deal. We stayed at a very nice hotel, here in India a hotel room goes for 24 hours from the time you check in…not just night until the next morning or by noon as it is most of the time in the U.S. We started out for the Golden temple (a Tibetan Buddhist village 2 hours more from Mysore) at 6am!! We all attempted to sleep in the car, but awoke a bit along the horribly bumpy roads. The drive was beautiful though; the roads were lined with rice patties and rivers, and field of tobacco and corn. We arrived and had a nice breakfast at a café and did some shopping in the Tibetan import stores. Then came the best part of the trip—we toured the grounds of the monastery and saw all of the many temples on the grounds. We were there just in time for Morning Prayer and meditation, so we observed that in one temple and then continued to the biggest temple where we sat with the monks and joined in the meditation silently with our own prayers. It was lovely to just sit amongst monks who were so devoted, and to hear their music as we sat and prayed made the experience much more rich. We left feeling refreshed and renewed, and set back for Mysore city. On the way one of our administrators who as with us, Gopaul, showed his true colors as he had the driver stop by a corn field and collected some corn to take with us!! It was quite a hilarious sight. We had a lovely lunch and I discovered my new favorite kind of Indian bread, called a parota, it is flaky and soft and very scrumptious! After lunch we had a VIP tour of the grand Mysore Palace, arranged by another administrator Kevin whose dad is a good friend with a police officer in Mysore. We were taken into a back room to remove our shoes, as it is required you remove your shoes when you enter any special place in India, but most others must remove them outside and leave them at the gates of the palace. We were then given a personal tour guide who showed us around the palace personally—most others buy a guidebook or are forced to look on in wonder without complete knowledge of what everything is. We were shown great works of art—on the walls in styles of painting (the paint had real gold in it!), in the forms of ivory and gold sculptures, and we even were shown the gold thrown that was placed upon the back of the elephant that carried the king in parades and other important events (it was made of solid gold!). We were then taken into rooms that only VIPs are shown, which were the weapons and taxaderm rooms. The weapon room had over 1500 weapons of all varieties, from solid gold swords, brass knuckles used in mud wrestling matches for the king’s entertainment, and even poison disks! The adjoining taxaderm room had 22 whole and complete stuffed animals—a favorite Mastiff dog of the king, tigers, lions, jaguars, alligators, you name it ….it was there. Then on the alls were countless number of elephant heads, giraffe heads, and more. In the middle of the room was a table surrounded with stools made of elephant feet…it was quite elaborate and very uncouth amongst many Westerners!! I find it interesting that a country that is made up of mostly vegetarians didn’t have any problem with killing animals to show their power and wealth, puzzling!?!? After our full palace tour we went for an elephant ride and then a camel ride around the palace grounds, this was a blast…sitting atop an elephant you feel completely majestic and have a whole new view of the world…no wonder they placed the maharaja kings up on elephants, you naturally feel powerful and regal! We continued on to a nearby Hindu temple called Chamundi hill temple, we were there exposed to just what Hinduism is all about. People had brought different offerings of fruit and flowers to the goddess that resides there and said their prayers there. The priest blessed us and he placed some red powder on our head to signify we had been blessed and to keep away the “evil eye.” On the outside of the temple there was all sorts of cows—this is because the Hindus see the cow as a sacred and special animal that has divine wisdoms. I took some pictures with the cows as I fed them some of my blessed carnations from the temple; they were very cute and approachable. I watched the sunset over Mysore city…a lovely way to end my last day in Mysore. Almost end is more appropriate, because before we returned to Bangalore we first returned to the Mysore palace to see it lit up, as it is every Sunday night for only an hour. It had white lights on every curve and corner, and simply splendid looking—out of a fairy tale or something, a palace completely lit with Christmas light, nothing more beautiful have seen here yet! On the way out of town we stopped at St. Philomena's Catholic church, there in the basement as Philomena's body in rest for everyone to pay their respects. So in one day we visited a Buddhist temple, Hindu temple, and Catholic church. After all this excitement we returned to Bangalore…only to get stuck in a torrential downpour on the way, but we made it safely with our conscientious driver, Manju, hip hip hooray!