Chamundi Hill, Mysore (Desara festival 2nd of October)

Monday the 2nd of October was a public holiday so we seized the opportunity for another day in Mysore.
For some reason we both like Mysore. It seems a more relaxed pace even though there is probably over a million people living there and there is the ever constant people, noise, traffic adn pollution that is India. This trip we took Jyothi with us as she had never been to Mysore. She was soooo excited and honestly didn't stop talking for the whole three hour journey! She and Raj seemed to get on marvellously and then two of them talked together and Chris Daisy and I sat in the back and absorbed the sights and sounds. Our first stop in Mysore was Chamundi Hill (that was of course after the mandatory stop at the coffee dafe day enroute!) This is a large hill(1062m) that overlooks the city. Pilgrims are supposed to climb the 1000 + steps but we took the easy 'Raj' route in our car. Poor Jyothi had said that she got travel sick and we saw evidence of this after the winding roads of the ascent. She was so funny as she would be chatting and then suddenly step aside, be sick, drink some water adn then continue her conversation with out skippinng a beat. We were both terribly impressed! There is a temple at the top of the hill and various market stalls and hawkers of every imagination! We circumnavigated the temple and found ourselve the centre of attention. We were admiring the view when some nice people aked if they could ahve their photos taken with us. We obliged and soon found ourselves surrounded by clicking cameras and calls to 'look this way'. We must have had over twenty different people taking our photos! After a while we did hav eto move on as there was becoming quite the gathering around us. Not much further on we started to see monkeys in the trees. I am not sure if you remember but Chris and I were having a competion to see who saw the first ten monkeys. It was a furious finish as we were all calling out our monkey sightings (I think Jyothi saw ten first) and Chris pipped me right at the final post. This meant that I had to cook dinner. We wandered in amoungst the throng and sellers and took photograph and looked, watched, smells and were reviled. jyothi narrowly escaped death by almost being crushed under me and I slipped in a huge cow poo and lost my footing. Luckily I didn't go down and there were lots of offeres to help clean my thong and bottom of my trousers. This of course was offered after all and sundry rolled around with laughter!! The view from the top was lovely and worth the trip. Mysore palace, our next destination, is just to the left of centre in the above photo.