Happy Krishnas

Before going to Mysore we had a little stop in a mountain city called Ooty, as we met some people who suggested us to see the place.
Ooty is a rural village, plunged in nature, which revealed to be a very cold place, and we didn't expect it, of course...we had to wear very heavy clothes and the temperatures were around 0 to 5 degrees.
Nevertheless, Ooty was a very nice place to stop for a couple of days.
This is one of the many temples in the village, showing many hindi deities all next to each other.


The landscapes were nice and we wandered around the city eating kilograms of homemade chocolate, the speciality of Ooty...
After freezing for 3 nights, we decided to move on to Mysore, though.

This is the outside of the very famous Maharaja's Palace of Mysore, residence for the maharajas in Mysore. Unluckily, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the palace.
The palace is of pretty recent construction, which took place about 100 years ago. The inside is shining of gold and marbel, very luxurious and astonishing.
There are many places and buildings to see in Mysore, but the ones which were most charming to us are not touristic attractions.

Two guys took us with their rickshaw to the old town to show us handcrafts of Mysore.

This place is a bidi (indian cigarettes) factory. Bidis are rolled in leaves, every single one is made by hand and one employer is able to produce about 4 thousand cigarettes a day.
The Indians love their bidis: they are cheap, healthier than normal cigarettes and the fabrication produces many working places. That's why our guide called this cigarettes "a gift from God for the Indians".

Mysore is also known for its wood works. Besides many furniture factories, wood is used also for art. This man was creating pictures out of several species of wood, putting them together like in a puzzle. The result was very surprising!
The picture you see contains no colour, nor any kind of paint, it's entirely made out of wood.






Another fascinating place in Mysore is the Devaraja's market.
Once you enter it you get blinded by beautiful colours and guided from one sweet smell to the other.

This powder colours can be used as body painting, cloth painting or simply on paper...
The Indians use this colours to paint their forhead, as ornament, for religious purposes and many other unknown aims.
We loved them and, obviously, we made each other the same present for Christmas ;)



The fruit and the flower part of the market....
Flowers are used as hair decoration for women and to produce oils (for perfumes, massage, as anti-mosquito...or for getting high- you could find pure marijuana oil..just in case you wanted, of course ;)


From there only one smell could get even better: sweeeeeeeeets!

This brick-looking things are sweets.. very very sweet. They mostly contain brown sugar and coconut.














Unexpected, Christmas came by...also here, in India. We did our best to maintain some traditions from home, as you can see. There were presents, the chrismas tree, a big dinner...and a big food intoxication for Filippo...:(
Luckily it's over now. Tomorrow we move on from Mysore to a place in the south of Bangalore - we will try to find an Ashram, which our beloved yoga teacher Sajee suggested us ;)