Mysore has the Palace from central casting.

Overwhelmingly beautiful, a melange of styles and colours that come together incredibly well.

It’s a pastel wedding cake that perfectly captures the essence of India – a hodgepodge, a mishmash, a series of stratified layers and rings more numerous than any tree or rock, an avalanche of appropriations of such diversity that it shouldn’t work – but joyously and splendidly gloriously it does.

The seat of the Wodeyar maharajahs the British architect, Henry Irwin designed it in 1912 after the original burnt down.

The Royal Family, their attendants and Durbars.

Time for an ice cream after all the excitement

Then pick up our clogs from the Chappal store

We return for the night performance which is an enchanting fairytale of lightbulbs with a slightly off- kilter brass band kicking off with  Colonel Bogie before embarking upon the strangely familiar tune below.

A prize has been announced of a date with the dislocated hippies  for the reader who identifies the tune.  2nd prize is two dates.