Friday

Everything around here isn’t thrilling and exotic. Sometimes things are pretty mundane. Like how on Thursday night I slept badly because I’d practiced next to people with colds for a couple of days and seemed to catch whatever it was that made them hack away next to me for 90 minutes.

Instead of getting up at 4 AM on Friday for led practice, I slept in and decided to practice in the stairwell here at Anokhi Garden. I couldn’t use the room, because Anna is madly in love with the ceiling fans and likes to keep the room as cool as possible. No worries, though, there was room in the stairwell.



The ant trail that formed on the left edge of my mat kept me moving along at a good clip.

And then, of course, we had more exoticism, in the form of a visit to the Mysore Palace. Here’s a link to info on the palace.







Some cows outside the palace, still dyed from the New Year festivities. It’s pretty fun to see all the cows still going around in their blue and yellow and green and pink dye jobs.

And, um, the link above notes that you can’t take pictures inside the palace. Which makes me feel a little abashed about posting the following images.











Unbelievably beautiful architecture. There were all kinds of beautiful objects like carved boxes and exquisite paintings and carved glass chairs and silver doors.







The Palace is in downtown Mysore, which is always incredibly busy with people and loud with car horns and general city hubbub. The only city in America that even remotely rivals the energy of downtown Mysore is New York City, and I’ll bet even the most enthusiastic New Yorker can be hard-pressed to deal with Mysore’s energetic intensity.

In order to recover a bit from our visit, we decided to have an early dinner at the Metropole Hotel.



The courtyard of the Metropole. Calm and relaxed.







A quiet haven for those of us who have had our fill of adventure.



But wait. What about this painting from inside the Metropole?

It hints at our next adventure.

Stay tuned.