Jaisalmer Shopping.

	Jaisalmer Shopping
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Jaisalmer's flourishing tourist trade has made it one of the best places in India to shop for souvenirs. Prices are comparatively high and the salesmen notoriously hard at work, but the choice of stuff on sale puts the town on a par with Pushkar and Jaipur.

Good buys include woven jackets, tie-dyed cloth, wooden boxes and ornaments, camel-leather slippers ( jhoolis ) and Western-style clothes. Puppets are sold inside Number One (aka "First Fort") Gate, but you'll get better prices buying direct from the puppet-makers' quarter north of town, immediately below the "Sunset Point"; to find it, pick your way through Bhatia Bazaar and follow the main arterial road north past the Narayan Niwas Palace hotel, turning left when you reach a junction that drops downhill past a row of painted mud-and-thatch houses.

Every conceivable kind of traditional Rajasthani textile is sold at shops in and around the fort. Most of the pieces on offer are specially made for the tourist trade at craft centres such as Sanganer near Jaipur, but you can occasionally find older garments, or patches worked into wall-hangings, at the more established dealers.

The best place to start looking is the Barmer Embroidery House, near the Patwon-ki-Haveli, Gangana Para, in the north of town.

The stock here ranges from standard Jaipuri block-printed bedspreads and mirror work or appliqué cushion covers to rare door- hangings ( torans ), ornately embroidered cradle covers, sari blouses ( choli ), Lamani chillum pouches, camel tack, and silk-woven mashru skirts from the remote Muslim villages of Kutch.

Even if you aren't buying, it's worth coming to see what the village women of western India used to make and wear before the advent of mass-produced day-glo polyester. The shop owner, Mr Abhimanyu Rathi, has actively encouraged the revival of traditional motifs and techniques by loaning some of his better preserved antique pieces to local craftswomen for them to copy. The results are stored on bulging shelves in his first-floor showroom.

Also worth a visit are the various government-run Khadi Gramodyog shops dotted around town (biggest branches at Gadi Sagar Gate and Gandhi Chowk). The best bargains, and most authentically regional pieces, are the tough, richly patterned hand-loom shawls and woollen blankets from Khuri and other villages near the Pakistani border, all sold at fixed prices.