Manjula's team is here to help you have a great visit to the wonderful city of Mysore.
You know what they say?
It’s the people that makes a place, as reflected in many of the guest comments in our books and online reviews.
I don’t think it’s possible to over emphasise. In my view, people connecting well, becoming friends, enjoying life, is what it’s all about.
Yes we’ve set it up and it is our home and you’ll feel us, throughout the place and while she’s not with us anymore and by now has hopefully found another place or is waiting for me, Manjula’s presence, her essence is most definitely here and with me and always will be.
It’s a happy, open, welcoming home.
It’s the many varied, rich mix of guests (see photos below) that add the icing on the cake. That make it all worthwhile. Even over her last few months when she became more ill she wouldn’t close the place, meeting and interacting with guests until the very last, was what she wanted. Manjula recognised that you had become our family and the incredible support both she and I have received when she was ill and for me over the more recent difficult times have been incredible.
I want to introduce you to a few of the members of this constantly evolving extended family.
The lovely couple, Amy and Tom…
…first came to visit us maybe five or more years ago. After that first holiday trip they got married, resigned from their jobs and became nomads, travelling and working around the world. We sort of adopted them (and they us) and see them regularly here or elsewhere. Amy was our celebrant at our wedding, Check here and here and here Tom took the photographs! They knew of Manjula’s illness and so were with us on two occasions early this year and once they’d learned that she’d moved on to another life (our previous postings and Manjula’s story can be found here) they came again, especially flew in to support me for two weeks. I hadn’t realised how much I needed it but I really did.
Ina, moved to Australia from Scotland as a young child, so I wonder how does she still have such a strong Scottish accent after a few years!? Ina visits every year and became a great friend to Manjula. Her first visit was to meet up with a Tibetan monk, living a couple of hours away in Bylakuppe. It was the first time she’d met after over ten years of providing financial support.
Meet more of our team and guests, our family here and recent guests Jean-Yves and Nathalie and their great blog entries of their visit.
Manjula and I have visited previous guests in the UK, I’ve visited guests in Canada and the US, two guests have sent paintings of Manjula and Lucie, we’ve celebrated birthdays and Christmas, I’ve met guests at the music festival featured in a fictional story on our site here, a guest has planted trees in New Zealand in memory of Manjula, I can go on and on (as you will realise)….
We are so lucky.
As a guest of Mysore Bed and Breakfast you’re not expected to do all these things,(although you’re welcome to) just come stay and have a great visit.
We look forward to welcoming you,
Peas and love
Stephen
check the photos, there are many more in our flickr albums here
Manjula’s Mysore is here to help you get the best out of your visit to this wonderful city.
We’ll get you to the bits of Mysore you might not otherwise see and provide fascinating insights into life in India.
We offer you our home. A clean, friendly and comfortable place that’s lively energetic and when you need it a quiet relaxing respite from the constancy of India.
To make your visit extra special, we also offer our MYCycle tours, only the second guided cycle tours of its type set up in the whole of India. Combine them with our useful information, advice and hassle fee transport.
This photo from August 2019 shows the high level of the Kaveri River at our favourite place Srirangaptnam just outside Mysore
The super city of Mysore and its many fantastic attributes are featured in the Guardian.
Yes, and we do get a couple of mentions, too…
Please check their article here….. for much more info on Mysore
How long to stay?
We are asked so often that we thought we’d show what visitors have experienced and thought after staying here.
Our current guests are an English family living in France with mum and dad and two pre teen children. It goes without saying they are a lovely group, gang, team….. They ARE staying here 😉 ALL our guests are great.
They have been here three nights and have covered the following:
Walk up Chamundi Hill followed by dinner in one of our favourite roof-top restaurants Hotel Roopa.
Next day after breakfast at our place, Vasanth in his auto rickshaw took them to the Silk Mill, followed by the Maharaja’s Palace and then the idiosyncratic art gallery at Jaganmohan Palace. Royal Mysore Walks provided a walking tour to introduce the city, market and street food. Dinner was veg Indian feast prepared by Manjula.
On the third day, it was equally packed. Pancakes for breakfast. A MYcycle tour of Srirangapatmam that lasted most of the day followed by late lunch at the riverside restaurant. Vasanth then helped them sort out their bus tickets to travel on to north Kerala on the fourth day.
Their verdict? We’ll let them speak for themselves.
To us, it has reinforced one key fact. They’ve had a wonderful time and managed to fit a lot in during their stay. As with most of our guests they wish to stay longer. Once people spend time here and realise it’s a lovely easy-going accessible city with year-round great weather and much more to do than they first thought, they all feel that. If it was possible to stay (it isn’t) our family might fit in another trip to the island, see some of the local artisans, art museum, sand sculptures, more of the countryside and even do a bit of shopping.
Please note: you can find more details of the highlights listed above in our page of ‘things to do in and around Mysore.’
We absolutely love having our wonderful and diverse range of guests. There’s no continent which hasn’t visited us many times over, except perhaps the Eskimos and Penguins, and their neighbours.
I’m often heard declaring how it’s one of my best jobs ever (except it’s not really a job) because it’s providing great opportunities to engage and communicate with people and one’s input has perceivable impact which we can feel, real results. so it’s Fab.
As a consequence, we make good friends, our family extends and the BnB community grows, and when we say goodbye, so much, it’s sometimes sad.
Yet, you know, we wouldn’t change it.
So thank you to all our wonderful friends.
here’s a few of the over 1700 of them here
more of our guest photos can be found at our photo albums
Our guest book is a lovely read. It helps remind us of the startling range of lovely people who have crossed our threshold and brought Wonderful connections into our Mysore life. Well it’s also a hidden source of even more art! Thank you.
Flowers and Gardens
Mysore is known, in Indian terms, as a tier two city, with around a million residents It feels, however, more like a town than a busy metropolis. One of the reasons it has this human-scale is its gardens, tree lined avenues and lakes. Where we’re based in Siddartha Nagar (or layout), a residential area just ten minutes in auto rickshaw from the Palace, at the centre of the city, we’re fortunate to have a series of gardens with one just opposite our house.
We’ve also put some effort in to creating our own garden on the roof and ensured you’re welcomed by greenery at the front gate.
Our potted plant roof garden, at its best over the winter, is a great asset for the guests. For a drink in the evening, place to meet our other guests, watching the fruit bats fly over in the evening, and generally chilling out, its one of our communal sit-out areas
part of our team is our gardener: Narainappa here assisted by his nephew Venkatesh
Mysore is also easily accessible to gorgeous rural areas with fields and rivers close by and national parks a little further away. Our most popular cycle tour is on Srirangaptnam where you can get a good feel for rural life.
STOP PRESS Just last night, at midnight, we were so pleased to have caught our … appears-only-once-and-at-night flower
its a Brahmakamal and coincidentally is used as part of my logo for the UK business: flourish training and consultancy
http://www.indianbotanists.com/2013/04/epiphyllum-oxypetallum-brahmakamal.html
with a wonderful range of guests visiting from India and around the world staying at the BnB, celebrating Christmas, New Year and Stephen’s Birthday and often joining our cycle tours in Srirangaptnam and Mysore. Please check the link below for your photos if you’re one of our guests who joined us in December or one of the months before.. (other photos will be posted later) https://www.flickr.com/photos/manjulasmysore/sets/
our first young Indian family on a MyCycle Srirangapatnam Tour
Priya kindly reviews our MYCycle Tours to the Club Mahindra community. Her family, from Mumbai, that’s Priya, her husband Hashin and son Tarun, joined us on Srirangaptnam tour. We’ve had many families join our tours but this was the very first young Indian family and whilst they are trail blazers and cycling is becoming more of a leisure thing in India amongst young people, we hope we will see more Indian families trying out cycling.
Manjula's Mysore 