Mysore is a town in the state of Karnataka, famous for it's Maharajah Palace, the colourful Devaraja market, ashtanga yoga, silk and sandalwood incense. I am lucky enough be designed a spare bed in the apartment that Tracy (TJ) is sharing with Jessica and Lillie; they're all studying yoga, and they get up at 3 AM to get to their morning practice! We hang out with some of the other yogis, and one should think that after more than a week of listening to them talk about all the different asanas (poses) with their proper Indian names, some of it should have rubbed off on me, but no such luck. TJ is also getting near the end of her trip, so we do all the things we have to do before we leave India: soak up the sun, eat tons of fresh fruit, go to the tailor, eat at Indian restaurants, travel in auto-rickshaws, shake our heads at the madness, drink chai, send parcels, be pestered for our 'country coin' at every street corner, buy gifts for people back home, take in all the beauty, barter, breathe through our mouths in dodgy places, try to do something about our 'Indian feet', take pictures of vegetables, exercise patience when the power goes off - and buy silk saris.

The sari shops are scattered through each street like pearls on a string, and they have the most exquisite, outrageous, bollywoodesque, gorgeous, tacky and beautiful lengths of fabric here. (The jewellery shops also winks at us temptingly from large windows with gold and precious stones gleaming for us to enter through the door, but for the most part we just sigh longingly and walk past). The sari is still worn by most Indian women, and they range from cheap synthetic to very expensive crepe silk adorned with so much bling that it could sting your eyes. The sari is a 5 to 6 meter length of fabric, with a more elaborate variation on the theme at the end. This part would be draped over the woman's shoulder and hang down her back, so this part is the most special. We don't want to wear saris, but we are determined to take home some silk to make into bedspreads, skirts, dresses or curtains or whatever - anything to be surrounded with this beauty and the memory of India. We are hunting for the Mysore silk, and we start in the Mysore Silk Factory. This is still India, so when we arrive we have to leave our bags with the security guard. We ask were they are to be kept, and the guard just puts them on the floor behind her desk. We assume she will stay put, guarding our valuables with her life. We walk into the factory area, and get to see the silk in its various stages from thread to fabric- unfortunately no butterfly cocoons here. The sound from the various machines are overwhelming, but at least one guy is wearing earplugs. We can pretty much walk anywhere we want, and the machines are right there - winding thread onto spools and weaving gold thread into beautiful borders on white silk. When it is time to leave we accidentally come across a blackboard with some information for visitors. Indian style. Very strict and formal were it shouldn't matter and very casual and informal were it should. The traffic situation would be an example of the latter. We find our way to the exit, looking for the guard that was safe-keeping our things. Nowhere to be seen. Our bags are just lying on the floor, not a person in sight. Indian style. The shop in the factory leaves a lot to be desired, it's too expensive and not very exiting.

The next day we take the bus to the shopping area in Mysore. It has taken a while for me to get used to all the attention I am given in any shop in Asia, and I almost feel I offend the shopkeeper personally if I don't buy something. And in India the shopping is serious. At least one person is assigned to each customer or group of customers. We are seated on a cushioned section of the floor, and we just point in any direction and a sari will be pulled out and spread out to our approval or dislike. We are given chai or juice, and all the personal attention is so unusual, and we feel like we're being treated like royalty while in fact, we are only backpackers and regular people. We go into a shop to look at scarves - silk, cashmere and wool blends. Tracy and I work our way through hundreds of scarves, in different materials, colours, patterns and price ranges. The sales clerk takes his time spreading piles of scarves on the table in front of us. Like a book he leaves through each scarf, waiting for exclamations of like or dislike from us. We are each given a stool to put our favourite pieces on. When something strikes our eye he very meticulously and slowly opens the scarf to give us the full effect of its beauty. We feel for the girl who has to fold all the scarves that has been pulled out from their place on the shelves. It is hot in the shop, and we are tired. We perk up when we each receive a steaming glass of hot, sweet chai, and we diligently continue our way through the wall of scarves. The power goes off. For about an hour. The candles makes it cosy, but not light enough to see anything. We take a walk on the street to cool down, and take a short turn about the market across the street.

The Devaraja market is famous for it's variety and visual appeal, and it is a huge place where people sell vegetables arranged in the most tantalising way, fruits likewise, rows and rows of shining bangles, mountains of plastic containers, multiple meters of flower garlands, rainbow coloured powder shaped to look almost like ice-cream cones, perfumes in beautiful glass bottles, incense sticks, spices and so much more. I really enjoy my strolls around this place. Sometimes it's busy and there is a frantic hustle and bustle of people doing their shopping and vendors trying to persuade them go home with their wares. They shout out what they have for sale, and some even have hoarse voices at the end of the day. Towards evening it's more quiet and fewer customers. It is all so foreign and exciting. My favourite part is the flowers. Endless baskets filled to the brim with fresh flowers in delicious colours. Some of the garlands are made out of tiny flowers tied together by thread, so probably up to a hundred flowers in a garland that an Indian woman would wear in her hair. There are garlands made of bigger flowers too. Even roses. Some are elaborate and reserved for weddings and other big celebrations. The men and boys make these garlands many meters long, probably so that people can decide how long a piece they want to buy. They sit cross-legged like snake charmers with a coil of flowers in front of them, the head of the garland moving back and fro as they weave their magic. Everywhere you look your eyes are bombarded with colours and just heaps of stuff; even the carrots are put into beautiful circles layered on top of each other. A few days later I sit on the train from Mysore to Chennai. The woman sitting next to me on the train looks at my photos and wonder why I have taken pictures of vegetables. Well. It's beautiful. And different. And it shows such abundance in this country that has such devastating poverty. It is one of the contradictions that strikes me many times over: there is SO MUCH of everything here, and yet there is not enough. Or put plainly: it is not distributed amongst everyone.

A few fake gold bangles later we return to the shop and wrap up our scarf-shopping.

The next day we look for saris, and whenever we see a shop that looks interesting we stop by to look at what they've got. Not all shops are used to foreigners, and they rush around trying to get us to buy things. If we spend a while looking at things maybe even two people are pulling out of the shelves, opening sari after sari, to then leave empty handed, it feels a bit uncomfortable. After a while we get the hang of it, and by now we've probably looked at hundreds of saris. We know what is available, what we like, what questions to ask, what an acceptable price is and how to spot something special within seconds of laying eyes on it.

We indulge in the self labelled title of 'black belt shoppers' after we spend ten minutes going through an amazing amount of saris, putting aside the 'maybes' and then at the end going through them once more to take home the winners. There are so many beauties we have to leave behind, but our new title demands of us to be strict and uncompromising, and we promise to remind each other to only get things that we 'love'. 'Like' just isn't in our shopping vocabulary any more. When we see something we love, the sari is opened in it's full glory to make our jaws drop in wonderment. We touch the fabric, desperately trying to decide whether it actually is silk or if it's smooth surface is indeed only synthetic. Every single tourist has been fooled. At least once.

We have breakfast at Tina's. She is an Indian woman running a café in her house. Her food is delicious and healthy, and she also gives Indian cooking classes. Her English is perfect, and through years of dealing with foreign yoga students she knows how to relate to the crazy westerners. TJ's flatmate Lillie and I go to attend a cooking class. The food is so yummy. But my absolute favourite is the breakfast: millet toast with scrambled eggs with onion, tomato and potato served with tomato chutney and a large mug of coffee or chai. If we're really hungry we'll share a bowl of fresh fruit: banana, papaya, coconut pomegranate and figs. But food is not the only thing Tina is good for.

Some people have found some used sari shops. This seems like the perfect opportunity to buy really beautiful saris that isn't so easy to come by, for a fraction of the price. Juliana, TJ, Jessica and Lillie have all found some wonderful bargains, but their joy is short-lived as one of the shopkeepers tells us that the saris are stolen; an Indian will never sell their old saris, or other belongings for that matter. The usual thing is to give it away or make it into something else. Now I can't possibly buy any used saris, and a general feeling of gloom descends on us - just imagine the bad karma. Well, if anyone can tell it like it is, it's Tina. We ask her what the truth is likely to be, and she tells us - with her no-nonsense attitude - that it has been common for ages that a woman will trade an old sari for something she wants to buy; many women don't have any money themselves. With a communal sigh of relief we excitedly return to the used sari shops. If you can call it a shop. We find a man perched on a pile of sacks filled with saris. The shop is a shack with three walls and a roof. The good thing is that you can see what the colour is like in natural light, on the spot. He opens one sack after the other, and though most of them are not all that special, we each find some gems. This is in the alleyways of the city, and most folks around here are not used to seeing any tourists here. We are given chai and more attention than we care for.

All of this has to be shipped home. So the hunt begins: we need cardboard boxes. Not many shops want to part with their boxes, so after a long wander through the streets we need a break and sit down in a modern looking café. It has black and white interior, and we opt for the white leather sofa that looks so comfortable. When you lean back in it though, you realize that there is too much ear in the cushions, so you bounce back and have to sit up straight in a funny way. We hope that since we buy some delectable desserts we might be given some boxes here. We share a chocolate sponge cake layered with warm chocolate mousse and a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, and we are really impressed by how delicious this is. The yogi next to me in the white leather sofa exclaims: because of this indulgence we will have to have a light dinner tonight. I think for a second. Hm. We've been having fruit salad for dinner every night, what is a light dinner then - a glass of water? So much sugar, and the funny sofa makes us a bit silly and we both laugh and take some funny pictures. We finally manage to gather as many boxes as we need, and when we're told by the man in the post office that each parcel should not way more than 5 kg, we try to work out how much that is. Are the saris more or less than 5 kg? To send the parcels we have to have each one sewn into a sturdy material, and if we have a tailor do that first to then later discover that it is more than the permitted weight, we're going to die. Or at least be annoyed. We buy a kilo of bananas and figure we have found the solution, we can just measure the saris against the kg of bananas. Clever girls. Well it turns out that a light dinner is still fruit salad, but a smaller one without curds. So we use some of the bananas. The next day we take our parcels to the pharmacy, there are some scales outside the shop. For one rupee we can weigh one parcel. They're all less than 5 kg - hurray! We go to the main post office in Mysore and after having the parcels sewn in white material by some guys in an alleyway mattress making shop and after queues and forms and mysterious glue and a French guy that easily ships off a 15 kg parcel, we can go the Maharajah's palace. It's so beautiful and TJ refers some of it's history and features to me. But all I can think about is the Taj Mahal.