Oh what a perfect day

On Sunday Sarah took me to the Devaraja flower market, which is a bit like Columbia Road flower market, except instead of overpriced plants and annoying hipsters in £5 shoes from Brick Lane there's massive sacks full of flower petals and women who have spent the entire day sewing millions of daisies together, and twelve year old children making you incense sticks and showing you their sketch books which has been signed by every single westerner that has bought something from their stall. They all say things like "Thank you Deepak for such a fantastic afternoon. We really enjoyed smelling all the different perfumed oils you sell and we can't wait to use all our wonderful incense's. Cant wait to come back! Sue and Kevin, Wolverhampton"

This kid was 12 years old and knew 5 different languages. He made us a few Sandalwood flavoured incense sticks which I will probably give to Jackie.

Then we took a romantic walk to the Mysore Palace so I could watch them turn on the lights at 7pm. We got there at 6.45 and there was some kind of live theatre show going on involving a four year old girl on stage shouting stuff we couldn't understand and who had the most annoying high pitched voice that was being amplified to a deafening volume. Sarah suggested we go for dinner and then see the lights on the way home. We treated ourselves to a semi-posh dinner at the Park Lane Hotel in Mysore which had a really weird tribal mask outside and above our table had these red light switches which you turned on every time you wanted service, a bit like in a plane when you need the air stewardess for a sick bag. I kept switching the light on and asking for stupid things which pissed the waiter off.

The restaurant was full of gap year students, package holiday families and twenty-somethings with Lonely Planet popping out of their ruck sack. Was actually a nice change from the yogies. Then we got a rickshaw home and found out that the Palace lights only stays on for an hour so I missed it and I leave Mysore today so i'll never see them. I'm still trying to forgive Sarah.