Garlands of jasmine, marigolds and roses

We met up with our tour guide Subash Tamang, a charming man from Darjeeling of Nepalese descent who is a Buddhist – how perfect is that? His English is excellent and he speaks Hindi as well.

Our tour companions are a lovely couple from Ottawa, Bud and Trish who have done extensive travel with this tour company and Hilary from New York City on her first trip to India.

We have a comfortable mini tour bus with big windows and lots of room and best of all a great driver named Raman.

We said goodbye to Bangalore this morning around 8, with mercifully lighter traffic and made our way to a Jain pilgrimage center en route to Hassan.

At a small crossroad, Subash bought some bananas and we took photos of the garlands available for sale.