A Day of Shopping in Jaipur

Monkey on roof of our hotel

How did the cow cross the street? 

Inside the factory

It is two days before the Jaipur Literary Festival starts. Thus we have two free days. Today was devoted to shopping. The absolute good news is that none of the shopping involved going into jewelry stores.

We mostly shopped for textiles. Rajasthan fabrics are very colorful (as are most Indian textiles). Because the nights can be very cold they have lots of vests and other heavier garments and wonderful bed coverings.

We went to one store that had endless choices. The owner then drove us in his car to his factory. It was about 6 floors chocked full of textiles from all over the sub-continent. The organization was minimal to our eyes, but he could find what he wanted. Men were hunched over sewing machines stitching away. All I could think of was the factory collapse recently in Dhaka, Bangladesh and wondering what are we doing in the middle of a textile factory. I hoped the Indian construction was better than the Bangladeshi. From the roof of the factory we could look down on the surrounding neighborhood.

We did buy several items, and I have to confess my bargaining skills were utterly off. We continued on to look at several more stores. Then on to the Festival to pick up our passes and schedule. We had pre-paid via the Internet and brought our receipts with us. We stood in line and when we got to the registration desk found out that only speakers could get passes today. We would have to return tomorrow. Further, we were told we had to give them copies of our Passports to be issued the passes. Our hotel copied our passports for us and now we are ready for the Indian bureaucracy.

For dinner we walked thru the darkened Muslim area from our hotel to the hotel that John is staying at. At first I was worried for our security, but the hotel said the neighborhood was safe. All we saw were motorcycles zipping along, an occasional cow and a few open stalls selling street food. John’s hotel has according to the owner been in the family hands for 6 generations. It is slowly being renovated. I think we were the only guests for dinner and ate in a small private room. They served a fixed talli plate, with a single choice: veg or non-veg. The Talli plate has little cups of food on it, so you get to sample a wide variety of food. The food was good and the experience walking to and from his hotel added to the mystique. Tomorrow we plan to hang around the hotel, have massages and then go to the festival venue to pickup our passes and schedule.