We have now taken up residence in an apartment in Gokulam, a suburb of Mysore. It is becomingly increasingly famous for offering yoga studies, which means on average I now see one other white person a day (whereas previously it was none). It does mean some of the shops cater towards more children friendly foodstuffs.
A quick recap on the last week. We found this flat through an idle conversation with a rickshaw driver. Everyone knows someone here, so needless to say he ended up taking us on a ride of apartments he happened to know. Given these are all cash deals, I am not embarrassed to admit that it is fairly scary giving wodges of cash to people you barely know. Felt remarkably like a huge drug deal (or how I imagine huge drug deals feel). But we are installed now and all seems good. We don’t have aircon, but we do have fans all over the place, and the heat doesn’t seem to be quite as horrendous these last few days.
We have also employed the services of a cleaning lady. She washes our clothes (by hand, up on the roof), cleans the flat, does the washing up and takes the rubbish out. Every day. For 1500 rupees a month (about £22). I feel like a slave driver, but everyone seems quite happy with the arrangement.
The other day we went to Mysore zoo. We had certain fears about the state some of these animals might be in, or the enclosures they might be living in, but these proved to be unfounded. Occasional mobbing of the children once again. Isla and Beth have developed different defensive strategies: Beth goes all shy and tries to hide behind our legs. Isla says “No, man” irrespective of gender, and tries to hit them. I am trying to train Isla to say “1 rupee” to photo requests but so far it is not working.
Transport everywhere is by autorickshaw (or tuk tuk if you are of a Thailand persuasion). These career through traffic, fighting against bicycles and pedestrians and cars and trucks. Rules of the road are definitely in size order. Haggling for the fares has become a lot easier now that we know roughly what we are talking about. To go in from Gokulam (where we live) into Mysore City (approx 12 mins), to go to the supermarket (poddle around for 30 mins), got to the bookshop (poddle around for 20 minutes) and then back again costs 100-120 rupees (about £1.70).
The girls await outside the Airtel mobile phone shop whilst I sort out the SIMs. The ladies have given them these Disney balloons (to shut them up). Snow White bears a remarkable resemblance to Laura … Now we know what she was doing all that time in Calcutta.
No comments:
Post a Comment