Shopping in Bhopal

Although my time in India was limited, there is always time to shop. We were staying at the Courtyard Marriott in Bhopal and there was a very nice, large mall connected to the hotel that we wandered around in quite a bit. We spent a lot of time in Chhabra 555 which I was told was a popular chain store for buying saris. I ended up having a suit made (a long tunic top with drawstring pants) and others in our party bought several saris. In the picture below of the front of the store note two things- all the mannequins are caucasian, which I noticed in all the stores we went to everywhere, and the mannequin on the far left is wearing a sari made from tartan plaid.)

There was a very large grocery store in the basement level of the shopping mall were we picked up a few necessities (like toothpaste). Here is a photo my husband took of a display of colas (he's responsible for the majority of the photos in these India blog posts by the way).

One of our outings included a trip to New Market, which is in downtown Bhopal. (Being the only tourists there caused us to be the subject of a lot of looks and picture taking.)

We spent close to two hours here, checking out bangle shops, sari shops and just walking around taking it all in. Sari shopping in Jackson Heights, New York and in Bhopal were very similar experiences. You enter a shop and ask to see saris in a particular color and they just start flinging beautiful fabrics down in front of you until you feel overwhelmed by color and beauty. In Bhopal it was men running the businesses so if you wanted to see how a sari would look, they would graciously drape it around themselves so you could see it (if you didn't want to have it draped around yourself). Note all the packages on the walls of the shops, they are filled with saris of different colors and designs.

The bangle shops were beautiful to look through. Many of the bangles here are made of glass and are bought in sets. Bangles are selected to go with a sari or suit and it is considered very important to match the color of the bangles as closely as possible with the color of the fabric in the outfit.