Pinkalicious

Thursday was a shopping marathon!!! Our first stop was Ridhi Sidhi Textiles in Jaipur, which was absolutely amazing. Yes, an unpreposessing exterior, but wow!  This is the main retail shop, where we all fell madly in love with the kantha quilts.  You can see them stored on the shelves, with the overflow spilling onto the floor..
I bought five of them for presents, including one made of silks. There were several more rooms, filled with pajama sets, shirts, clothes of all kinds, and more fabric.

Then we moved on to the warehouse, where one room was just piled with quilts, wall hangings, clothes and who knows what all. We pawed through the piles looking for gold and in some cases found some.  I came away with this old (how old?) quilted piece. 

A bit the worse for wear, and I don’t dare wash and block it, but I love these liberated stars.

In the main area were bolts and bolts and bolts of cloth. Wow! They use this electric cutter to slice through zillions of layers of fabric. (Sorry for the dizzying ending!)  Again, I bought some yardage, of course.

Then on to the final warehouse/shop/business, where we saw the men doing block printing and tried our hands at it, too.  Look at all those intricately carved blocks on the shelf behind him!

We also tried on lots of clothes (none of which worked for me but others struck gold), and bought more. Unbelievable! We ran out of time so we will return later to pay up.

After this, we were booked for tea at the Sujan Raj Mahal Palace, an 18th century building which has been converted into a boutique hotel for the rich. Tea was in a room known as ‘51 Shades of Pink’  and served by turbaned waiters. Lovely little cakes and sandwiches, and, of course, tea. 

We walked through an elegant Anglo-Indian drawing room on our way to tea.  Here are the current owners:

A vintage American car was parked under the canopy outside. Very fun.

All in all, a good day, and here’s the group picture outside Ridhi Sidhi to prove it!