Devaraja Market is the most vivid hour you can spend in Mysore. The covered market off Sayyaji Rao Road is a labyrinth of low-ceilinged passages lined with stalls selling flowers, incense, dried fruits, jaggery, spices, silk thread, brassware, and everything required for domestic religious life. The flower section at the entrance is the most spectacular: towers of jasmine and marigold garlands, their smell hitting you at the doorway, assembled by vendors sitting cross-legged amid mountains of petals from before dawn.
Go in the morning — the market is at its best from around 7am to noon, when produce is fresh and the light through the high windows catches the colour best. The market empties in the midday heat and restarts in the late afternoon. It is not especially a tourist market — most buyers are locals shopping for daily necessities — which gives it a pace and purpose that the government craft emporiums on the main street lack. Silk, sandalwood soap, and incense are sold here alongside the fresh produce, and the prices, after negotiation, are generally lower than the fixed-price shops.