Today, Cynthia, Christina and I ventured out to do some shopping in Mumbai, primarily to go to the Mangaldas fabric market. You know how sometimes you go to the Cheesecake Factory and they give you that menu with the index and you have absolutely no idea what to order because there are way, way, way too many options? Well, imagine that the the staff was also making and throwing each plated menu item at you while other restaurants were tugging on your clothes trying to get you to go there. And imagine that all the advertisements in the menu were also shouting at you and that you had to haggle about the price per chicken pot sticker, and you've got a pretty good idea of what the day was like.
We allowed the least aggressive of the shouting advertisements to lead us around for awhile through the market and to several shops outside. He, however, weaved and dodged through the streets at a totally unreasonable breakneck pace (considering that we were walking four deep) and kept taking us deeper and deeper in more confusing directions, and we were never really sure whether we would make it out alive. Turns out he was very, very nice and really just trying to help for a tip or a small commission, but none of us were really sure that was the case until it was all over. Still, my thanks go out to him, because I'm not sure I would have been quite as assertive with the shop clerks if we hadn't been led there.
Unfortunately, after several hours of running around and looking at stall after stall and wholesaler after wholesaler (many of which were up very sketch staircases where you kind of thought you might get beat up by the fabric mafia), I wasn't really able to get anything I needed. While the fabrics were amazing and really well priced (especially at the stalls), people tended not to have the quantity of fabric I actually needed. And at the wholesalers, the selection wasn't there. Christina got some great stuff, but was only looking for a few yards at a time. At the recommendation of a friend of Rachel and Wayne's, though, we're going to another market tomorrow where I hope I'll have better luck.
After the market, we met our driver Raju who took us to the Bombay Store, which was like a legitimate version of the Bombay Company. The air conditioning alone was enough to get us to think that this was a much better way to shop (though the market was a pretty crazy bananas thing I'm glad I experienced). Christina and Cyn picked up some great gift-type items for a very reasonable price, and then we headed over to the government-run Cottage Industries Market, which gathers together a bunch of handicrafts from Indian artisans. I managed to pick up some truly awesome handmade gift bags to use for the hotel guests' welcome packages, which I, of course, was not looking for at all. Still, I'm pretty excited about them.
We're settling in to a couple of beers and some Chinese food in a bit and regrouping for tomorrow. I'm off, mostly because Rachel just walked in and usually likes to read my blog immediately after posting, despite having lived through the day herself.
Monkey sightings: still no change. I was told there would be monkeys.
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