Arriving in Mysore

Finally, I'm in Mysore! The plane was 8 hours delayed, so we had a long wait at Heathrow. Our preordered taxi waited for us from 4 a.m till 12.00! Then it tokk nearly four hours to drive from Bangalore to Mysore (180 km). Bad roads, cows, traffic jams, you name it. It was hot and we were tired. We finally arrived at the Green Hotel and just crashed. No dinner, hard beds, very noisy, but I slept uninterupted for ten hours! It was a very nice hotel though.

Next morning we went to Gokulam, which is the area where the shala is located. It is Mysore's posh area. We looked up Shiva, who is one of the two "brokers" who can help you with just about everything. He is a man in orange clothes and a long beard who greats you with "Namaste". Not the kind of man you would think of as a businessman, more of a holy man, but I'm sure he makes big money! He said he only had two possible apartments for us, one with just one bedroom, and one with two bedrooms, but it was very dark. We looked at the one with one bedroom, thought it was nice, but could we please see a few more before we decide? Preferably with two bedrooms? "Why you want to look at other?" "If you like this one, you take it!" Ok we said a bit shaken, we take it. Then we went to have a coffee at Vivienns, and we talked to some people who said that 12 000 rupies for only one bedroom sounded very much, so we decided to look at a few more apartments the next day.

We found two other brokers, Murthy and Raju (actually a rickshawdriver with connections), but all the apartments we saw were too dark, too dirty or too far away from the shala. So we finnaly settled for the first one: the one with one bedroom for 12 000 rupies. Ok, finally we can settle down.