The JP Fortune Palace is a much smarter hotel than we anticipated, having booked online at a fairly modest price. We are quite early but there is no problem. We are being upgraded to a club room FOC. If only we knew what we were doing right we would do it more often. R has to be dragged away from the cricket on the lobby TV. England are just starting to take a few Indian wickets. The room is splendid, even running to a kettle and Assam tea bags so we indulge.
By now it is nearly midday and the sun has yet to break through so it is significantly cooler than any day since we got to India. We plan out our day. As we have missed breakfast we will have lunch and then visit the Mysore Palace and the nearby markets.
The restaurant is devoid of customers but is open. They obviously don't get a huge amount of business as the waiter has difficulty finding the menu page that lists the 'Always Available' items. The background music is all instrumental and appears to be from an album called Bert Bacharach meets Russ Conway. We have ordered a plate of veg pakoras and Chicken Kathi rolls which take a while but are worth waiting for. Just as we are finishing our meal a TV screen is switched on and a clatter of English wickets ensues.
We sort ourselves out and head out onto the street. A passing auto stops immediately and offers to take us for Rs 40. En route the driver suggests a programme of autoborne delights covering our time in Mysore and pulls the no change trick as an encore. There is a pattern emerging here. Mysore seems to have more open spaces than many cities in India with some quite broad boulevards, particularly in the area around the Palace. The traffic is not too heavy and moderately well behaved, even at roundabouts.
We are dropped at the main gate and buy our 'Foreigner Tickets' @ Rs 200 apiece. The rate for locals is 40. There are notices prohibiting photography and a security guard directs D to a special locker room for cameras. Next stop is the Shoe Depository. Suitably barefooted and camera less we queue to have our tickets checked and pass our bags through an unattended scanning machine. There is a very big notice saying no cameras and mobile phones are to be switched off.
There are a lot of Indian visitors and just a few Westerners. We all have a set route to follow. The men who ruled Mysore up until 1947 were big shots with their own private army and some field guns survive. These are still used on ceremonial occasions. We move on to the first of several vast rooms that we will visit. The first that we come to is the Wedding Pavilion, lavishly decorated and topped by a stained glass rooflight displaying peacocks. Every feature has a plethora of intricate detail. It soon becomes apparent that nearly everybody ignores the photo ban. Some people are walking round holding their phones in the air taking videos.
Most of the Indian visitors are in no mood to linger and jostle each other to get through the doorways first. Some places on the circuit seem to be persistent choke points and there are staff on hand to blow whistles and hustle along anybody who dawdles. Every so often there is a gap in the flow of humanity and for a couple of minutes there is the option for tranquil and serene contemplation of the intricate details that abound everywhere that you look.
The circuit takes us upstairs and into the absolutely breathtaking Durbar Hall, where the ruler of Mysore heard petitions from his subjects and ruled on disputes. The room doubles up quite handily as an elevated viewing platform looking out over the parade ground. This room is clincher for D. Hang the consequences, out comes the phone and a few photos are taken. After this the Private Durbar Chamber pales into insignificance. Our circuit is over. We recover our shoes and camera, ignoring the very unsubtle demands for tips. None of the Indian visitors are asked for these and the noticeboards clearly state that these are free facilities. We take a walk in the grounds and get some pictures of the exterior of the Palace. On Sunday evenings and public holidays the building is illuminated with 90,000 light bulbs. Our train on Sunday leaves 20 minutes before switch on.
We walk a few hundred yards to the main market area. This is a proper market, mainly selling necessities for the locals and we only see one other Western couple in the hour we spend walking round. There are so many colourful stalls. The photo opportunities are endless and many of the stallholders happy to chat. Even the ones who do want to sell are not persistent. R decides that she needs some tea so we navigate the excavated pavements and deposit ourselves in a Modern Cafe for good sized glasses of black tea. 
We return to the hotel to discover that the background music is now being played in the lifts and in the corridors. The current selection is bagpipe music, with Auld Lang Syne the only recogniseable tune. We sluice off the dust and change into our gladrags for a Friday night on the town. On our way out the music has moved on to a selection of Country & Western tearjerkers. Nothing quite like Your Cheatin' Heart by Hank Williams to set a party mood.Our choice is the Park Lane hotel which gets a decent write up in LP. They have draught beer in pitchers which is reasonably priced and acceptable quality. After last night's epicurean bonanza we opt for good ol' Butter Chicken with lemon rice and a butter nan to share. Just right as none is wasted. The auto driver wants more for the trip home than the way out but it's still less than a quid so not really worth a row.
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