35/ 100 Cauliflower Dog

Today’s story will be more of a photo essay again as I my day has been eaten up driving back and forth to the hardware shop, B&Q, so that I can finish renovating the bathroom that’s been eating up the last month of my life. I only need paint but there is nowhere nearby that sells it so I have to jump in the car and head to the next town.

Last week I was chatting about India with someone who had never visited and they asked about the shops there. More specifically, what brands of supermarkets do people go to? I hadn’t really thought much about it and honestly couldn’t even think that I had seen one single supermarket on our whole trip. I think it would be fair to say that folk here in the UK probably do almost all of their shopping in a large supermarket, and that’s probably also out of town. In India most people seem to buy their food in markets. And there are stalls selling food, and just about everything else, everywhere.

I assume the food sellers do go to bed at some point, but I couldn’t help but notice that so many of them would be stood by their little carts from our early morning photography starts at 5am, right through to when we trundled up the road to our beds at 10pm. In fact, the later it was at night the more stalls there seemed to be. When I go back next time I will make it my mission to find out whether they actually go home at all.

At night the shopping really picked up its pace. All those grey and filthy shutters were lifted up as soon as the sun had gone down to reveal colourful and brightly lit interiors full of all sorts of wondrous artefacts. I absolutely love wandering around these streets in the evening. Because the streets are so dark there all the shops and stalls look like little beacons of commerce shining into the night. You can expect many more photographs to come.

Do yourselves a favour and look at the photographs below on a proper screen, if you can, as there is so much to see in each one.