The Palace; The Birthday; The Guru

This first photo is of the king's throne. It has 250 kg of gold in it.
Felix’s Blog: Palace
Today we went to the palace where the king of Mysore lives. There are glass boxes where all the kings of the past belongings are except for the kings treasures. There were weapons, gold paintings, carriages, old utensils, old cutlery and quite a few other things. The palace is very big.

There are lights everywhere on the outside of it so at night when they turn them on you can only see the outline of the palace, which looks very cool. You can go through nearly the whole palace except for the part that the king is in. Most of of the old painting are of gods or goddesses. There are also old pictures of the king. On top of the palace there are four big red domes and one big golden dome.


This is one of the lounge rooms in the palace

The stained glass ceilings came from Belgium. The palace was rebuuilt in1897 after fire destroyed the previous wooden palace. It took 15 years to build. All the columns you see are cast iron, and were made in Glasgow, Scotland and shipped out.

This is the Mysore Palace.
This is the front view. Under/behind the big arches, in the shadowy depths, is the 'front veranda' (see below).
This is the 'front veranda'. to the right of the picture the palace opens out to the courtyard and gardens. It is the epitome of opulence

More "Gully Cricket"

Tai’s Blog: Palace We woke in the morning did all the usual things, then we jumped into a rickshaw and went to the palace were we saw an old beggar with no arms so we gave him some money. After we had bought our tickets we went into the actual palace. The first thing we saw was the courtyard! We walked around the palace and even the throne and then we saw one of the huge red domes. The roof was made of glass and the glass was decorated with peacocks. After we got out we went to the Palace museum where there was amazing pictures of gods and goddesses. After that, near the end, there were all of the weapons. When we went down a long flight of stairs to some shops where people were trying to get us to buy things from their stalls. We went to the pool and played with some of our friends and then went home. It was my mum’s birthday so we had a big party. In the morning we went to the yoga Shala as usual, but we came back and I was very excited because we were going to meet the guru which is very special because hardly anyone gets a chance to see him. The people who are being taught are taught by his grandson. Then we went to a hotel the Green Hotel where there was a small organic market. After that we hopped into a rickshaw that took us back home. When we got back, we went on the street to play with the Indian kids until we went to dinner at a place called Anu’s. Then we hopped into a rickshaw and went to the palace. We got through the crowd of people to the gates just in time to see the gates light up. When we got through the gate we saw the most amazing thing of the whole trip, the whole palace was lit up and from where we were first standing it looked like it was fake. If you squinted it just looked like an outline, when we got closer a band was playing. After that we saw a parade of soldiers on horses. After we followed the horses we had one last look at the amazing castle before going home.

Every Sunday night (at 7pm) the Mysore Palace is illuminated by thousands of lights attached to the outside of the palace itself and outbuildings. People from all over India come to see the spectacle.

John and Susan are professional orchestral clarinetists from Dublin, Eire, and played duets from Mozart's The Magic Flute at Dani's 34th Birthday party
Not one, but two birthday cakes! Naughty yoga students!!!
This, of course, is what to do with birthday cake. Note Dani's new koorta top.

The picture of Ganesh up above our heads is a wood inlay picture Dani and Peter gave to Guruji as part of our wedding ceremony. It was placed in its present position on the occassion of the wedding and is still there!

This is the view into the Shala from the main entrance doors. Usually when we come in there are 50 - 60 students all sweating and breathing deep slow loud Ashtanga breaths
This is the chair on the small raised stage that Guruji sits in to talk students through 'lead practice'. His health hasn't permitted him to do lead practice for over a month now. Sharath leads the practice now, but never sits in this chair, rather, he sits in a plain red chair behind and to the right of this one.

This is a picture of a photograph of Guruji and his wife, Savitri. She passed away over ten years ago