Tower Chowk Market

Tower Chowk — known to locals as Ghanta Ghar, the "clock tower" square — is the pulsing commercial heart of old Ujjain, the point where the temple-city's oldest bazaar lanes converge.

• The tall clock tower that gives the crossroads its name presides over a constant churn of cycle-rickshaws, hand-carts, shoppers and pilgrims threading between the Mahakaleshwar temple precinct and the ghats of the Shipra (Kshipra) river.
• This is not a monument to be ticked off in ten minutes but a living market to be walked, where the character of Malwa's mercantile life reveals itself street by street.
• Radiating out from the tower are specialist lanes that have kept their trades for generations.
• One direction leads toward cloth and sari merchants, their shopfronts stacked with bolts of fabric; another toward brass and steel utensils, puja items, rudraksha and religious paraphernalia bought by the busloads of devotees who pass through.
• Bangle sellers, dry-fruit and spice traders, stationers and small jewellers fill the gaps, and the whole grid tightens further during Shravan and the great Simhastha Kumbh, when Ujjain swells with pilgrims and the bazaar trades from dawn to late night.
• It is a place best appreciated on foot, camera in hand, soaking up the porch-front commerce and the tower's old-town silhouette.
• For the traveller, Tower Chowk works as an orientation hub as much as a shopping stop: most autos know it, it sits within an easy walk of the Mahakaleshwar corridor, and it makes a natural first stroll for anyone getting a feel for the city.
• Come in the cool of morning for the breakfast stalls, or in the early evening when the lamps come on and the shopping crowds thicken.
• Food here is the market's quiet headline, and it is emphatically vegetarian.
• Around the clock tower you will find Ujjain's beloved poha-jalebi breakfast — flattened-rice poha topped with sev and served alongside hot jalebi — plus sabudana khichdi, kachori-samosa counters, dahi-bada and traditional sweet shops turning out malpua, mawa-bati and jalebi.
• Ask any stall for its pure-veg kitchen and pair the snacks with a plain, refreshing lassi or chilled thandai (choose the ordinary bhang-free thandai).
• It is honest, inexpensive, satisfyingly local eating.