EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

If you come across an Indian handicraft object or garment abroad, chances are it will have been bought in Jaipur. Foreign buyers and wholesalers from all over the world flock in their thousands to the Pink City to shop for textiles, clothes, jewellery, miniature paintings, puppets and pottery. As a regular tourist, you'll find it harder to hunt out the best merchandise and fairest prices, but it can be fun trying. As a source of souvenirs, nowhere else in India - not even Delhi - comes close.

In keeping with Maharaja Jai Singh's original city divisions, different streets are reserved for purveyors of different goods. For clothes and cloth, including Jaipur's famous blockprint work and bhandani   tye-dye , recently pedestrianized Bapu bazaar , on the south side of the Pink City is the best place. This is also where you'll find those pointy-toed camel-leather jootis , and traditional glass, laquer and inlaid bangles. On the opposite side of town, along Amber Road just beyond Zorawar Gate, rows of emporia are stacked with gorgeous patchwork wallhangings, embroidery and traditional or antique Rajasthani costumes; these places do a steady trade with bus parties of wealthy tourists, so be prepared to haggle hard. The same is true of the outlets of the city's renowned blue potteries , further along Amber Road, where you can buy old-style Persian-influenced vases, in additional to tiles, plates, candleholders and a host of other Westerner-oriented nick-nacks. For top-quality blue pottery, though, visit the shop of Jaipur's most famous ceramist, Kripal Singh, at B-18A Shiv Marg (near the Jaipur Inn ), Bani Park. Bear in mind that Jaipur's blue pottery is essentially decorative; none of it - in spite of what some shop owners tell you - may be used for hot food as the glazes are unstable and poisonous.

For silver jewellery and gemstones, Chameliwala Market , southwest of the old city, is in a league of its own. It is also one of the hardest places to shop in peace, thanks to a particularly slippery breed of scam merchant, known locally as lapkars . Usually young lads in their late teens or early twenties, smartly dressed in Western clothes, these smooth operators speak excellent English, which they use to befriend foreigners in the street. Offers of trips to local beauty spots are invariably followed by a stop at a "relative's" art studio, pottery or carpet-weaving workshop. The sting comes when the visitor is pressured into buying something with a credit card, which is deftly whisked into a backroom and used to run off a few blank dockets. One is signed on the spot; the others are filled in and completed with a forged signature later.

When buying gemstones, you should also be extremely suspicious of anyone offering an address in your own country where, it is claimed, you'll be able to sell them at a huge profit. This is nonsense, of course, but by the time you realize this you'll be thousands of miles away wondering where the mysterious entries on your credit card bill came from. So if you're paying for gemstones or jewellery with a credit card in Jaipur, don't let it out of your sight, and certainly don't agree to leaving a docket as security.

One place you're guaranteed to have no such problems is the opulent Anokhi showroom at 2 Tilak Marg, in the Civil Lines area, southwest of the city centre. Started by a British designer, who now employs hundreds of workers in the Jaipur area to produce garments for her high-street stores in the UK, this is the place to buy high-quality "ethnic" Indian evening wear, tastefully patterned salwar camise and block-printed or batique men's shirts. They also do lovely bedspreads and cushion covers, although you can find similar textiles at much lower prices in the shops lining the west side of the ground floor of Ganpati Plaza, on MI Road.

Finally, it's worth knowing that any stuff you've bought in Jaipur, but don't wish to cart around, may be sent ahead to Delhi or Mumbai. Silverwing Roadways, at Mandawa House, Sansar Chandra Road, 200m north of Hotel Arya Niwas (tel 0141/367542 or 376151) will truck parcels securely bound in cotton (which you can have done in the lobby of the Head Post Office on MI Road) to their little warehouses in Kamla Market, Delhi and Clive Road, Mumbai, where you can collect them weeks (or months) later. They charge around Rs100 for a large suitcase-sized package.