Our house

Yesterday, I hurt my back a little during yoga. It's the old disc problem that I live with. Like the "Delhi Belly" it was sure to happen during this trip, so nothing to do but rest a few days while it passes.

Consequently, I find myself up on the roof terrace of our apartment at a time of day when I'm usually inside napping or eating breakfast. It's lovely up here as the sun rises, and that inspires me to write about where we live as some of you have asked about it.

Erik in front of Nirmala Nilas

We have a two-bedroomed, two-bathroomed apartment in a small cute apartment building called Nirmala Nilas. I think the two rooms are usually rented out separately. The kitchen is basic, but it's bigger than we had in NY, and we've already been fairly creative with that strange gas hob.

The place has a roof terrace which is where I'm sitting. It's where the monkeys love to hang out in the shade of the palm trees, or play games like "how many ways can we slide down the roof?" or "what happens if I swing about on this cable?" They're going crazy around the place now as I write.

Roof terrace

Everybody enjoys a Pepsi

Three palm trees grow through the house, one of them starts in our entrance porch, makes an appearance in our neighbour's living room above us, and finally comes up through the roof.  It's pretty impressive how they've managed to build the apartment to incorporate the palms. The palm trees in turn provide some shade and keep things a bit cooler as we start to get temperatures of over 30 degrees fahrenheit on a daily basis.


There's also a little garden on the ground level with a swinging seat where we sometimes sit and read, and a questionable statue of an egret bird. 

Our neighbours are good. Two of them are at the same yoga school as Erik and I so we see them a lot. Above us is a couple from San Francisco who we met on our first day in the apartment as they held a pizza and movie evening for everybody. They are not yogis, they are here for other business, and have been a wealth of knowledge and tips for us. 

We are about a 20 minute walk to the yoga shala, which for us is perfect as we need that walk to warm up our muscles a bit before we start. The older we get, the more we need that we find, unlike the other younger yoginis who seem to be able to show up and throw their legs over their heads without a second thought. More on that in another posting.

On the next corner from us - in fact we can see it from our bedroom - is one of Mysore's best ice cream parlours. Some of you know that Erik is a huge ice cream fan, so naturally we have availed ourselves of their services more than once or twice already!!! All in all it suits us well for our 2 months in Mysore. Right, time for breakfast, a very un-Indian bowl of porridge with nuts!