Sound, sight and smell of India.
Today was set up to be a shopping and photographing day. Our hired car was a little early, so we set off about 9.30. The traffic was already building up, although many shops don’t open until 10.30 - 11.00 ish. We first visited a silk warehouse, Karnataka, the state we are in is famous for silk. Maria had one problem, - what to choose - John another, - how to stop her choosing everything. In the end we came away with 3 lengths of silk for tops for Maria, and 2 for shirts for John.
Onto another silk warehouse, this one selling Mysore silk, the best in Karnataka, only government shops are allowed to sell Mysore silk. It took a long time for Maria to decide, she was only going to have one length from here (it is pretty expensive) so she chose a beautiful piece with embroidery on it. The shop has a master tailor who will make it up for her and deliver the finished top to the hotel on Thursday.
We had a few other things to buy, and we needed to find a ladies and a gentlemans tailor to make up the earlier pieces of silk. The place to go was Commercial Street. As the name suggests this street is full of shops.
and cars…and people…
As usual you have to shout to be heard, and be pretty nifty at getting out of the way of cars and bikes. We bought a couple more lengths of fabric, cotton this time. We were also told there were many tailors down the side streets (even narrower, fuller and busier than Commercial Street)
Maria decided she wanted to take one of the silks back with her, the rest we split between 3 tailors, we will go back on Saturday to pick up the finished garments. The charge is 150 - 200 rupees to make a shirt or a top ( there are 80 rupees to £1)
The last thing we wanted was a leather jacket for Robert. This was a bit more difficult, this is not a leather working area so it is not easy to find shops selling leather goods. We managed to find one we hope will be OK.
Shopping out of the way, John was keen to take some photos, so we asked our driver to take us to a market. This is the market he took us to.
The area seemed to be mostly Muslim with a mosque off to one side of the square.
The market hall was a veritable warren, and some people just had their goods spread out in the street.
There were some familiar fruits and vegetables and many unfamiliar ones.
The most incongruous sight was the cow wandering around among the traffic, right next to the beef butchers.
Maria got John to buy me a jasmin and rose garland, to help me smell sweet. Cheek! As if I didn’t smell sweet already. Mind you it did help to mask the smell of the drains. Then back to the hotel and a nice cooling Kingfisher.
