Ken woke up feeling a lot better today so off we went to visit the local Rail Museum, as recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide. Since travelling on the 2 foot gauge Toy Train in Darjeeling we have both become a bit "Train Spotter" so that's our excuse.

It's quite interesting actually and is a nice quiet spot away from the traffic - so quiet one staff member managed to remain asleep at the door to the building containing an 1899 Carriage previously owned and used by a Maharani of Mysore, this despite us chatting away and wandering up and down under his nose. Good on him we say.

It was getting a bit hot by this stage but off we went to find the Devaraja Markets, all the while fending off auto rickshaw drivers who (quite rightly) couldn't understand why we were walking rather than riding. Walking around is usually the best way to see a place and gives you an idea of how much an auto or cab fare should be when you use one.

The Market is quite large and has a lot of its space devoted to fruit and vegies - all of which looks lovely and fresh. It's interesting to see produce with small blemishes - back home fruit & vegetables are starting to look like colour photo-copies of the real thing. You have to wonder why they all have to look so perfect, particularly as it's not unusual for the stuff to not taste as good as it looks anymore. Desley bought a pawpaw for 6 rupees ($0.13) and it was beautiful and sweet.

Other parts of the Market specialised in jewellery, watches, gems, silk, kitchenware, flower garlands, religious items, kumkum powder (the stuff used to make the bindi [forehead] dots) and just about anything else you may ever want.

Mysore has a population around the 800,000 mark and so is much smaller than the other places we have visited before this:-

Mumbai - 16,400,000; Hyderabad - 5,500,000; Chennai - 6,600,000

which may explain why just about everyone here seems to be more laid back and friendly than usual.

It's Desleys birthday tomorrow and we will be visiting the utterly massive Maharajah's Palace (which will be very special I think) - unfortunately you can't take photo's inside the building so we might at last actually buy some of the postcards that seem to be on offer at a lot of these sites.