It's Monday afternoon, and I'm in a cool, breezy internet cafe in Mysore, in South India, writing this note after traveling here yesterday via a flight from New Delhi to Bangalore and then a train trip to Mysore. Squeezing through the crowds in the busy, crowded complex Bangalore train station was a challenge, but we found our train and enjoyed a spectacular ride through South India's countryside to the relatively more sedate Mysore train station.

The previous day, we'd spent the morning of our last day in New Delhi visiting the Jama Masjid, Delhi's largest mosque. It's a spectacular building with high domes and soaring towers built by one of the Mughal emperors. As women, on entering the mosque, K and I were asked to don robes over our street clothes. We were already doing our best to dress modestly, according to custom in India. I was wearing a salwar kameez,a traditional outfit consisting of a long tunic over long fitted pants, with a dupatta scarf draped around my neck and torso. After donning our robes, K and I also pulled our scarves up to cover our heads, just to be sure we were being thoroughly respectful.

After exploring the main courtyard and arcades, B and I elected to climb the tallest tower of the mosque, while K rested in the shade of an arcade below us. A friendly young guide led B and me up a steep, narrow, winding staircase to the top of the tower--now and then we had to tightly squeeze by other visitors who were descending--and then explained the views we were seeing at the top, which were spectacular. I took photos, and our guide took some of us. As we descended, we could see two young men laying out carpets in rows in the open courtyard below us. These were for the comfort of worshipers already beginning to arrive for the early afternoon prayer service scheduled for about half an hour after we left. Our guide had explained that the courtyard typically holds about 50,000 people during the regular Friday evening prayers.

On leaving the the Jama Masjid, we decided to take an autorickshaw to Raj Ghat, site of the cremation of Mahatma Gandhi, and now a beloved national memorial. An autorickshaw is a tiny 3-wheeled vehicle with a motorcycle engine, small seat for the driver and larger rear bench seat for passengers, fitted with a simple fabric roof for shade. Zillions of them buzz constantly around in Delhi's streets (Mysore's, too), whipping in and out among cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, even a couple of bullock carts we noticed yesterday. Riding in one is exhilarating and, we decided, a not-to-be-missed part of traveling in India. Though it's not something one would want to tell one's mother about.

At Raj Ghat, we saw that the cremation site is surrounded by a courtyard and carefully tended gardens. A constant stream of visitors arrived as we watched, mostly Indian families coming to pay their respects, mostly dressed especially nicely, and usually stopping to take pictures of each other in front of the simple granite slab at the heart of the memorial. In one of our guidebooks, this site is called the heart of India, and we could see why.

We spent much of today exploring the maharajah's palace and grounds, the geographical centerpiece of Mysore. The palace is lighted up each Sunday evening for an hour, and we'd been able to watch that ceremony last night from our hotel's rooftop restaurant. It was like watching a huge, shimmering, fairytale palace suddenly appear against the night sky in front of us. With a bright half-moon above us and the palace in front of us, we felt transported into an especially magical scene in the Arabian Nights...though below us, we could hear the constant tooting of car and truck horns that, we are learning, constitutes the auditory background of an Indian city.

Wandering through the enormous palace and grounds, and a major temple complex on the grounds that predates the palace, took us much of today. Versailles is the only building I've ever seen that approaches this palace for sheer, extraordinary size and magnificence. Artistically speaking, I think this palace is more lovely.

We've also been enjoying just watching and interacting with the people of South India today. Men, women, and children are strikingly attractive. Many women dress in extraordinarily beautiful saris and salwar kameezes, and often have flowers into into their hair as they go about their business. I could sit all day and just watch them pass by along the streets of Mysore.

People here are a bit smaller than Delhites on average, and they took a particular interest in K and me since we're both especially tall. Now and then, I noticed people doing covert double-takes, and each of us was asked at times to pose for photos with families. I was asked to pose with a group of local women who were visiting the palace with their families. We did not share a language (I've been learning Hindi, but it's little used here). But after we'd stood together for a photo, arms around each other's shoulders, an older woman in the group turned and lifted her palm to me. I placed my palm against hers, and we gazed, smiling, into each other's eyes for a long moment.

Later, over cold drinks in a tiny street stall, B--who really knows his India history (and thereby saves K and me the trouble of toting a history book along with us)--noted the unfairness of the system in which the maharajahs taxed the people in order to build their extraordinary palaces. They provided few or no services in return, and in fact probably made their subjects much poorer than they'd otherwise be, he said. Reflecting on that fact, and on what we'd seen today, we observed that nowadays, the tables have been turned. The wealth of the maharajahs now draws visitors like us, providing income for the descendants of the maharajahs' former subjects. I remembered Martin Luther King's comment, "the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice." Or at least, sometimes it seems to.