Mysore area and Palace

So today I was joined by our art director, Michael, for a trip out of Bangalore into Mysore. Our driver, Ravikiran (Ravi for short), picked us up at 9am. It was a 3 hour drive of very scenic landscapes. It was great to get out of the city limits and enjoy the open landscape. The first photo was of this little stand but I noticed a pay phone attached to the tree that I thought was funny.
We started off with a visit to a smaller section of palace grounds. Then we stopped off for Lunch at this great palace now converted into a hotel. After lunch we made our way to nice temple. Here Michael and I were surrounded by random people selling various jewerly, postcards, etc. Many didn't take no for an answer and kept saying "buy buy". Michael made a quick friend with this young boy who was selling postcards. He began asking us to quiz him on capitols around the world. Michael tried to see if he could stump him, but the boy was surprisingly very good and had a pretty wide knowledge of them. When he tried quizzing us, we didn't fair as well. Lots of cattle were around here, along with cute little monkeys.
Next we stopped off to see a large statue of a bull, which is associated with god, Shiva. There was a priest inside whole was giving people a blessing with a coconut water. Michael and I went to the upper part to take photos. While we were a man on lower portion lifted his little boy up to us in order for his boy to shake our hands. For some reason the local people like to shake vistor's hands it seems. This happened to me in the park last weekend. A few minutes later he had his little girl come over and shake our hand as well.
Now we headed over to the main attraction the Mysore Palace. This was a spectacular part. It put the Bangalore palace to shame. It was in much better condition and was more vast. It's amazing the level of detail in the ornateness of every portion. We had to take our shoes off and leave them behind to go through. We didn't do this at the temple since it looked a little shady where we would have left our shoes.
It was getting later in day and we had seen enough. Ravi took us on the long trek back to our hotel. The drive back ended up taking much longer because of congested traffic and a muslim procession in the center of Bangalore. It was fine, but I was getting hungry towards the end. Ravi was really apologetic about the added time it was taking. Michael and I were in no rush and it was one more experience to take in.