i think it might be working to upload pictures now... the computer i'm on is now thinking or working on it or something.

we're in mysore. tonight we'll probably go see the illuminated palace - they light it up every sunday night and people come to look at it and see and be seen (not just tourists, but locals). also my rickshaw driver from last night told me that sundays there's no sales tax. or maybe he said just sunday mornings or something. something weird like that.

yesterday was devaraja market which is like a huge bazaar with fruits and vegetables and kumkum powder and flowers and bangles and there were even two goats for sale. walking there i saw all these weird shops like one called "cooker and mixi clinic" which sold kitchen gadgets and stuff, and another called "electrical devices, drycleaning." i bought a pomegranate on the street. also at the devaraja market there was a man trying to sell me an anklet which i wasn't going to buy but he was so persistent that he followed me throughout the whole market and his english was good, so he answered my questions about produce. that was cool. i saw water pumpkin, which is like a huge cucumber, baby cucumbers which are kumquat sized, sugar yam ( a huge root thing as big as a pumpkin, but brown), chikoo fruit, a lot of interesting things. and they are usually laid out in nice designs. on the ground. with the vendors' bare feet all around. and piles of beans and peas. i don't know why, but i just find it so interesting.

regarding feet: randomly people are barefoot. always beggars, but also randomly people wearing nice clothes. just walking around the streets barefoot.

something confusing is that a lot of towns and cities have two names. chennai = madras, mumbai = bombay, bangalore = bangaluru, and a lot that we now know or make sense. but there's also coorg = kodagu and madikeri = mercara. it's just confusing and a lot to remember.

on our bus from ooty to mysore we saw a wild elephant roaming around. we've been seeing monkeys but they're getting to be old news. hey josh, there's a monkey. yeah yeah, monkey monkey, big deal.

we shipped some stuff home and went to the post office to do it, but they wanted it packaged and we needed to go to some other person or place to have it packaged and put into a box. some kid approached us and said he could do it for us, right over there. so we followed him across the street, and bargained a lot because he wanted 300 rupees ($6) and finally agreed to $3. it took about an hour, and included an old beat up many-times-used cardboard box, a sewing machine he used to sew a cotton perfectly-fitting cover for the box, which was torn off because it didn't fit perfectly the first time and then made again, and then plastic covering. i could sort of see why he was charging $6 at first - it was quite a production. when it was finally done, the post office was closed, so we brought it with us and went back the next day to the post office. of course he wanted to ship it for us but we said no. oh, after the plastic he used a thread and needle to stick corners or other details i couldn't understand. anyway, it was pretty interesting. the box should arrive at home in a month or two.

okay i'm gonna try and upload pictures....