We reached the flea market around noon. It was a melange of colours, the crowd was swelling, and our driver had trouble finding a place to park the car.
We got out of the car and entered the flea market consisting of make-shift thatched huts which I believe are rented out by the square foot. Tibetan, Gujarathi, Rajasthani, and a great deal of westerners sell almost everything under the sun: brightly dyed clothes, trinkets, oxidized silverware, beach wear, incense sticks, spices, semi-precious stones, imported cigarettes, etc., etc. In fact, we saw a westerner sitting on his motorcycle and it took us some time to realize that the motorcycle was for sale!
We bargained (it's become a habit by now!) for some ethnic-styled pens and settle for Rs 20 per pen (down from Rs 50). We picked up a dozen so that we could give them away to our friends in Chennai (Madras); when we paid for them, the lady was short of 20 Rs so she gave us two bracelets to compensate. We got back to the taxi and told the driver of our purchases only to get a sarcastic smile and some advice on how to bargain. He told us that the pens were hardly worth 10Rs and the bracelets not more than 5 Rs each. So much for all the effort! We decided that it's a FLEECE market rather than a Flea market and headed back to our room.