On The Streets of India

Well, we did it.
We went to a local market in New Delhi. Sarah and I, her mum, and Sarah's cousin, Rupa. She was our guide.
We took a car from the hotel, and went to a market Sarah read about.
Waded through that market for a few minutes. Crafty stuff, but the ladies were on a mission. Sarah's mum needed some new saris. Rupa knew of another market nearby, so off we go in a local cab. Interesting.

Not so crafty, this was a bunch of clothing shops all packed into an old building. Some were actual shops, some just stalls, all were busy. And there were hawkers. One guy held out a watch to me. "Want to buy a RADO?" Yeah right. RADO starts at about $2k. I was looking at some in KL, and I doubt these were even very good copies.

We found a good sari shop. We go in and sit on a bench, facing a large platform. Really just full sheets of plywood end to end down the length of the shop, about a foot off the floor, covered in fabric..
This is how all fabric shops do it in this part of the world. There is a guy sitting on the platform, pulling cellophane packages off the shelf, tipping the fabric out onto their hand, and spreading it in front of the customer. I've seen both these ladies do this before, and within minutes, there is a pile of fabric building up on the platform. No different this time.

Half the stock is now in a big pile in front of us, and there is a smaller pile over there with the stuff they want. Walked out with eight saris.
Then we found a stall with shalwar kameez for Sarah. This time there is no seats, so I've got to stand there holding the parcels, while the ladies do their thing, and 40,000 of the locals squeeze past me. Ooh, ah, sorry, am I in your way? I'll just stand over...oh, sorry.

One more stop, to pick up some children's clothes for family friends in Dhaka.

So Sarah gets what she needs, and we find another cab back to the hotel. It's actually very close.

Now I must say one thing. If there was an Olympic event for bargaining, Rupa would be the captain of the Indian team. Spectacular. Once we walked away and kept walking. Every other time the retailer called us back and made the sale. Sarah was not bad either. A bit of a tag team, they were.

So that ABBA conundrum? Done it!

The pictures?
Sarah's cousin with her daughter.
Sarah got on quite well with the short one. She calls herself the baby whisperer now.