India Guide
Goa
The flea market
Opening time: Wednesday
Anjuna's Wednesday flea market, held in the coconut plantation behind the southern end of the beach is, along with Ingo's Night Market at Arpora, the place to indulge in a spot of souvenir shopping. Two decades ago, the weekly event was the exclusive preserve of backpackers and seasonal residents, who gathered to smoke chillums and to buy and sell party clothes and jewellery. These days, everything is more organized and mainstream. Pitches are rented out, drugs are banned and the approach roads to the village are choked solid all day with a/c buses and Maruti taxis ferrying in tourists. Even the beggars pay baksheesh to be here.
The range of goods on sale has broadened, too, thanks to the high profile of migrant hawkers and stallholders from other parts of India. Each region or culture is allotted its own corner. At one end, ever-diminishing ranks of alternative Westerners congregate around racks of fluoro party-gear and designer beachwear, while in the heart of the site, Tibetan jewellery-sellers preside over orderly rows of turquoise bracelets and Himalayan curios. Most distinctive of all are the Lamani women from Karnataka, decked from head to toe in traditional tribal garb and selling elaborately woven multicoloured cloth, which they fashion into everything from jackets to money belts, and which makes even the Westerners' party gear look positively funereal. Elsewhere, you'll come across dazzling Rajasthani mirrorwork and block-printed bedspreads, Keralan woodcarvings, Gujarati appliqué, Orissan palm-leaf manuscripts, pyramids of colourful spices and incense, "export-surplus" jeans and tops, spangly miniskirts, sequined shoes and Ayurvedic cures for every conceivable ailment.
What you end up paying for this stuff largely depends on your ability to haggle. Prices are sky-high by Indian standards, as tourists not used to dealing in rupees will part with almost anything. Be persistent, though, and cautious, and you can usually pick things up for a reasonable rate.