The Indian marketplace immediately awakens all of your senses. It is the epicenter for everything colorful, loud, pungent & chaotic. The streets are filled with cars, buses, motorcycles, elephants & camels all fighting for a parking space or honking for the right of way. The streets are lined with tiny, hole-in-the-wall shops that force people to file in one by one. Customers step over tea-time and businessmen while they shop, pulling at brightly colored thread or sampling a handful of pistachios.
There is no "one-stop-shop" in India. Each store specializes in one item & the owner is eager to sit down over a cup of chai and discuss the quality of the product. This makes shopping separately for fabric, thread, zippers, notebooks, glue sticks, saris, sewing machines, scissors & pens an amazing, but timely, experience.
3 days later Colleen & I have (hopefully) everything we need for the workshops. Ajmer bound!
-Tess