Lori and Bobette, doing what we do best - hitting the markets!

Sarojini is my favorite market because it is big, there is a huge variety of stuff, and it is all pretty cheap. There are actual shops, but usually they have encroached so far out into the street you can't tell if there is a building back there somewhere or not! And in many areas, they just put the merchandise out on the wall, or pillars, or on the ground. This is actually an alley. Much of the clothing at Sarojini is seconds, or rejects, or stuff they made with the leftovers. But some is name-brand stuff. We usually wear something we can try things on overtop, or a skirt for trying pants, as there are never changing rooms. Or bathrooms. Or drinking water, or security, or anything else you might want.

This girl was asking Lori questions about being a tourist in Delhi - some survey for her school, I think. Then she wanted a photo.
These are the outfits for 75 rupees. Yep, less than 2 bucks for a salwaar kameez. Of course, the quality isn't great, and they tell you they fit all sizes (really, like me and that size 0 Indian lady are the same??), but if you are looking for cheap...
And this is at the back of the market, where everything is laid out on a tarp. If you have time, you can score some serious deals. These guys don't even have shop space, so their stuff is cheap. But you have to wade thru it, or know exactly what you want so they can look. Here Lori is shopping for the scarves that I have one-in-every-colour. :) I LOVE THEM! They are a cotton, and they are cheap!

Lunchtime!! I love Sarojini because I can get the fired potatoes there...mmmm. I carry my own ketchup packs because they want to put spicy stuff on it and I want ketchup! You can see the guy in the blue shirt is cooking chunks of potato in a shallow wok-type pan. There is a puddle of hot oil in the middle and when you order, they push some chunks down into it to crisp up, then they salt it and serve it to you in a bowl made out of banana leaves. I LOVE IT! Another food on that short list. You can see the other guy, in the pink shirt (BTW, pink is not a girl colour here - and all the mens clothes are...how to put it...a bit feminine. Randy would never wear 75% of what the men's departments sell) holding Indian dressed Flat Stanley. More on him later, but I needed the photo of the food.
About a week after the trip to Sarojini, we headed back into Delhi to my other favorite market, Janpath. This is more hand crafted stuff - and more souvenir type stuff. On this one street, hundreds of bed covers, wall hangings, paintings, shawls, dresses, purses, etc etc. We go there so much, they wave and call to us when they see us now! This shoe shop sells the traditional leather slip-on shoes and leather sandals, among other things. One thing I hate about shoe shopping here is that, lets face it, my feet are bigger than standard, but they will get you some shoes, and say, these are perfect, when you say they are too small, they say no madam, fitting, fitting. And you have 2 inches of heel hanging off the back! but I digress.
This is a little kid dressed up at the God Shiva. For money, of course. Christelle took a photo then had to put money is his pot. I would admire his parents ingenuity if it wasn't the middle of a school day.

Janpath is a long street, so for fun, and to save walking, when we were done we took an auto-rickshaw. It was a bit tight with 3 women and a 3 year old and bags and bags of shopping, but we did it. It usually costs 20 or 30 rupees for a ride.

This is the outside of our favorite purse place, run by our purse guy Bryan. The inside is not so big, but he has so much on display! That is cool. What I really love is when we say, ok, we want this shape, with a shorter handle, maybe in blue, how about stripes? And he disappears into the piles for a second and comes out with a blue striped short handled purse, and you go wow.
This is video of the inside of our favorite purse place - run by our purse guy, Bryan. On the video I say 12x10, but I have since decided 10x8 is more like it.

On the way home, we pass this statue of Ghandi leading the march to the salt. I know all about it, because I read the kid's histroy textbooks when we first got here. :) It was one of the first acts of rebellion, when the British were trying to tax the salt that the Indians were harvesting from the sea.

Here is Lori's plunder. Oh what fun this represents! and not really a lot of money. At the back are quilted patchwork wall hangings, then there is outfits for her kids, her 50 rupee shopping bag from Sarojini (we find if you have a big bag, even if it is full, they don't bother you. But if you have any plastic bags, they see that you have been shopping and that seems to be an invitation to harrass you no end. So, we save ourselves the headache, and take a fabric bag.) beaded mirrors for her primary class, her salwaar kameez, and knock-off DVDs. I have a DVD guy at Sarojini - he is pretty good - 100 rupees for DVDs with 4 movies, or 9, or 300 rupees for 64 movies. (yeah, not sure how that works...) Whenever I complain about quality, he lets me swap, no problem. I like him. We have been able to get DVDs of some of the movies we owned only on VHS, so that makes me happy. I tried another guy at another market, and that went badly. Christelle had to start yelling. We had both tried games, Xbox for her, Wii for me, and they didn't work. Or the movies. So there was trouble. Christelle is not afraid of a scene if it gets us what we want. That is a fine quality in a shopping partner!!

This pretty much sums up our market shopping, there will be more later, but this did it for Lori and I. Next up, the Taj Mahal!!

the Fabric market in Delhi

I had been hearing about the fabric market at Nehru Place for awhile, but decided to wait for Lori to go there, since she is a big sewer. It is a bit different than a traditional market idea, because it is large shops, side by side. But we were completely blown away - this is like Jo-Ann's on steroids! And a whole street of it! Each shop was pretty big, then it had a basement or an upstairs or both. One place had a whole room of JUST EYELET!!! white, cream, ecru, brown. with small holes, medium holes, large holes. Every design you could imagine. It was incredible.

Of course, we bought stuff. The hard part was getting your eyes to notice any particular thing. It is hard to choose when faced with so many options. One store, tho, I was heading up the stairs and my eye caught on a piece of red and white fabric (80 rupees a metre - that's less than 2 dollars). I bought it for a kurta (the tunic-type tops everyone wears here). I LOVE it! And I think if you DO see one specific thing in all that chaos, you better go with it! I had it stitched for about $4. Only problem is, it looks great with white pants, except under the tunic the pants go pink! But it washes out.

This is Nehru Place - fabric and electronics, among other things. Can you see Lori and Christelle?? Isaac bought some computer games here another time (knock-off of course, and they were no good) and I had a printer cartridge refilled (after which it promptly leaked all out into the bag). (India tops the "buyer beware" list, I think). After all that shopping, we needed to eat. So throwing Lori to the wolves, we ordered food at this dhaba - Chinese, tho, not Indian. About $1.50. Iit was pretty good! And as I said, no one sick :) We also got fruit drinks, but we got them in disposable cups, especially after we saw this guy washing the glass ones. And I use the term "washing" VERY loosely. GROSS!!
He is just sitting in the middle of the street. With that nasty brown pan of water. ICK!

Next up, a visit to my favorite market, Sarojini Nagar.

Lori is here!! a visit to Qtab Minar and Dilli Haat

YAY!! Somebody loves me!! Enough to come all the way to India! Lori Clancy, who now lives in Spokane, but whom I have know since we first moved to DesMoines way back in 1997, decided to come and experience "Incredible India". You may have to ask her if it matched up the hype! (She told me when people say "did you have fun in India?" she says "...I don't know that FUN is the right word...") But we tried to show her some amazing, fascinating, bizarre stuff, anyway. (FYI she has 6 kids but most notably, her son Jeffrey is Isaac's long-time buddy, and Kiersten and Alex have also been friends since they were in preschool together.)
I was at the airport to pick her up, and wanted a photo, but I was just one of hundreds cramming up to the rails to see the people getting off the plane, so there was no opportunity. I wish I had photos of the airport - it doesn't look much like an "International terminal". But I digress. Lori had a list that I sent a few weeks early, and she did well to bring us some staples...cake mix, hair colour, spaghetti, tortillas, baked beans, marshmallows, mosquito spray, tortellini, Miracle Whip, croutons, and printer cartridges. You know, more of the essentials of life. She was severely jet-lagged, of course, so we went immediately for facials. (A well-known remedy for jet-lag!) Before I came here, I had never had one. I don't know how they are in the US but a facial here is not all I hoped for, but then, what do you want for $6, right? They cream, buff, steam, massage, cream some more. I think we got pedicures, too, which I love. More on the salon in another blog. We had a fairly relaxed schedule while she was here - we went somewhere one day, then stayed home one day, then went somewhere, etc etc. It seemed to work good. She did NOT get sick, so that is very good. We kicked Alex out of her room (the nicest room with the largest bathroom) so Lori could have it. The first place we went, to ease her into India, was to Delhi to Qtub Minar. I had been already, but without Randy and the kids, so we all went. Qtub Minar is a Muslim site, with a tower (the Minar) that in this case is 72.5 metres tall. You used to be able to go up in it, (all 379 steps) until recently when people were throwing themselves off the top a bit too frequently. (Suicide is VERY common here.) It is most noteworthy for the 7.2 metre iron pillar, known to be erected in the 4th or 5th century as part of a Vishnu temple and with NO rust at all after 1500 years. No one can explain this. It is carved all over with Sanskrit inscriptions. There is also a hall of pillars - this we found similar to things we saw in Mexico, at Chichen Itza - rows and rows of hundreds of intricately carved pillars. I love that - the amount of work is so overwhelming, and it is so beautiful.

Of course, there are many buildings on the site, including a mosque, and a tomb. And amazingly, some very nice lawns!





This is the 24 metre tall ruins of a really big idea - another tower that would have dwarved the Qtub Minar - the plans were for it to be twice as tall. Only problem was that the king building it died, so it never got completed. These photos are in the tomb area, so pretty with all the carvings and those gorgeous arches. Isaac is playing Indiana Jones here, hoping to discover a secret entrance, or something.

And then there is a hill, so we must roll down it.


This is a funny one !

I don't know, am I too easily impressed? I love this stuff - 800 years old and still standing. I am constantly blown away but what those guys did with no heavy equipment and primitive tools. Of course, they had elephants, and that's a lotta horsepower!!




So, when we left Qtub Minar we headed to Dilli Haat, which roughly translated means Delhi Market. I have probably mentioned it before - you pay 10 rupees to get in (25 cents which keeps beggars out) and there are booths which are rented out to vendors from all over India, on a rotating basis, so each time you go, the stuff is different.

The prices are higher, and the people are usually foreign, but it is a nice way to start out shopping here - it is clean, quiet, not threatening. And there is food. We ate garlic and butter naan bread (my absolute favorite Indian food - but it's a short list) and had kulfi for dessert. Kulfi is a pistachio flavoured ice-cream thing on a stick. The kids and I love it, Randy not so much.

We bought a few things, a beaded door curtain for Kiersten, and a GORGEOUS all-over embroidered jacket for Lori among others. This is a great time of year to visit India - hot but not intolerable.

Next stop - the fabric market!