While in Mysore, we stayed at a place called the Green Hotel. It's the former summer guesthouse of a Mysore maharaja that is transformed into an "ecologically friendly, non-profit hotel." What this means is that they save energy resources by not washing towels everyday, not providing TVs or air-conditioning, etc, and that, after paying off all the employees, they invest their net profit in charitable causes. Good for them, I suppose, but this extreme friendliness combined with the association with the Maharaja seem a little like a forced apology for British colonialism.
Also, the hotel has the disadvantage of attracting the sort of people who want to go to India to stay in an ecologically friendly hotel. They are the same sort of people, I think, who come here to do "spiritual" things and appreciate how the setting is somehow "more natural" despite the lack of traffic, pollution, and sanitation standards that Western cities generally have. As someone who tries to seriously study the place, these are not my favorite people. Still, their presence has the advantage that you can get good Continental meals here, including eggs, which I had greatly missed. The hotel also had the best coffee I've ever had, and the staff were very nice. I really enjoyed staying there on a personal level, even though I'm not a huge fan of how the hotel tries to reinforce tourist hopes for India.
Below is one of the flower necklaces that we were ritually garlanded with upon arriving at the hotel. It's sitting on a bowl of rosewater that's left by the entrance of the rooms for the guests to rinse their hands.
This is the building where we had classes in Mysore.
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