I met my first Mysore transvestite beggar today.  I almost got bitch slapped by him because I wouldn't give him any money - but I should have because he had a great swish and looked fabulous in his sari and leatherette purse.  I really thought it was a woman until she sat down next to me and I got a good look at her five o'clock shadow and the faint hint of mustashio.  And so it goes.  There's always someone more fabulous than me. I travel half way around the world to a place where I am the only white person for miles and I get upstaged by a mumbai trannie.  I need a better sari.

I'm not really sure what to write but I feel compelled to make some kind of entry here since I am now in Mysore and have started finding my way around, sort of.  There are all kinds of crazy bird sounds in the morning but I can't see them.  I keep thinking about the "Ladies Frisking Area" at the security point at both the Bombay and Chennai airports.  I figure it was so much fun the first time why not do it twice?  It's not everyday that I get a good frisking.  Behind a curtain no less by a sweet lady in a sari holding a menacing hand-held metal detector and passing it all over my body, them feeling me up from head to toe.  It was more like a costume fitting than a security check.  Given my short experience with handing out 20 rupee notes to everyone who does something helpful for me, I felt that I should tip her for doing such a good frisking job.  But then it may have been mistaken for a bribe and I could have ended up in Indian Airport jail and then had a movie made about the great efforts made to secure my release by the American government and the media, and of course my family.  It was a very dramatic frisking and the cameras were rolling for the whole drama all the way through my dramatic rescue - but then I wouldn't want to leave because of course I would have served my sentance at a WOMEN'S prison guarded by sweet natured, sari-wearing lady prison guards.  I have to tell my rescuers that I can't return with them becaue I had developed close relationships with my captors.