Handipura Kite Market

Tucked into the tight lanes of Jaipur's walled city, a short walk from Badi Chaupar and the Ramganj quarter, Handipura is where the kites come from.

• Long before the sky over the Pink City fills with fighting patangs each January, the paper diamonds are cut, pasted and tuned here, in a cluster of narrow shopfronts that has grown from a handful of stalls into well over a hundred.
• It is a wholesale bazaar first and a spectacle second: bundles of kites in mango-yellow, magenta and parrot-green hang in the doorways, reels of thread stack to the ceiling, and the air carries the faint smell of flour paste and cut bamboo.
• This is the craft market — distinct from the roof-top festival most visitors picture — and it is what makes Jaipur one of India's great kite towns.
• The trade here is old, commonly dated to around 150 years and traced back to the reign of Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II, under whom kite-flying grew from a courtly pastime into a citywide passion.
• The families who run Handipura's shops describe skills handed down across three and four generations, and many still supply retailers not only across Rajasthan but into Delhi, Gujarat and beyond.
• What rewards a slow visit is the making, not just the buying.
• Kite-making is piecework done by whole households: thin strips of springy bamboo are shaved and bent into the bowed spine and spar, squares of tissue-light paper are pasted and trimmed, and each kite is balanced by hand so it will climb and turn.
• Watch for a few minutes and you begin to see the division of labour — one person cutting, another pasting, a child sorting finished kites into hundreds — a quiet, practised choreography behind a product that sells for a few rupees apiece.
• For the vegetarian traveller the lane itself sells only kites, thread and reels, so there is nothing to navigate here diet-wise; the pleasure is purely in the browsing.
• When hunger calls, you are in the heart of the old city's pure-vegetarian belt.
• Laxmi Misthan Bhandar in nearby Johari Bazaar is a landmark eggless sweet house, the wall-top Ganesh Restaurant near New Gate does honest thalis, and the kulhad chai counters of Chaura Rasta are minutes away — all comfortably walkable.
• Come outside the festival crush if you want to actually see the artisans work; the weeks before Makar Sankranti are thrilling but chaotic.
• Prices are wholesale and modest — plain paper kites go for a pittance by the hundred, with fancier designs and coated thread costing more.
• Bargaining is normal, buying by the bundle is expected, and a little curiosity about the craft goes a long way with the shopkeepers.