Gone shopping

The day started with Mats and Max leaving, they were planning of going to Sri Lanka but there is right now more or less civil war there so their plan is to head to New Dehli first and from there improvise. After the classic chat about a reunion once we get back to Sweden they left and me and Martin headed to market for some shopping.

After we bought a lot of candy and we strolled around at the market and found one of the coolest jewel stores ever. The shop owner invited us into his store which more or less was just a shack, max 2 square meters but it was pretty nice inside and of course he offered us some tea. He was quite funny and we talked, watched jewelery and drank tea when he suddenly started to roll up a spliff. Thats a weird situation but we keep cool and when he noticed that we finished our tea he used a broom stick to slam on the roof. Apparently he has his family or something  on the second floor because we heard how someone or something started to move above us and after a minute or two we had new, fresh tea again. I don’t think I ever spent so much in a jewelery store but after some bargaining I bought a necklace and Martin bought two. He also asked us if we wanted to buy some hashish, and he was talking about kilos here. He suggested that we hide it in chess board and Buddha statues and offered us to buy on credit, my thoughts about the Swedish toll is a bit higher than that though so we friendly but confirmedly said thank you but no thanks,.

We continued over to next store and bought some scarfs of kashmir wool, Martin was a big spender and also bought a hat and a hoodie, myself is more thinking of if I should buy a close fitted Kashmir wool hoodie, that would be pretty cool.

“I dont like papers so this is a gift for you”
– Store owner gives us gifts

Last day in Gulmarg

We took an early breakfast today to be able to say good bye to Johan who left today. Once he left we headed back to our room and started to pack our stuff. Its crazy how much stuff we brought with us and after a while some indian guys came over. We met them a couple of days ago and they were interested in buying my snowboard but if I knew the culture here with all the bargain, cursing and everything I would never sold it. Now it was just to play along and finally we agreed to a price of €250, thats a really good price for them and for me? Well I more or less got the board for free and now I dont have to carry with me back home so win win I would say,

Next stop was the market, I finally decided to get my fit sized hoodie, even more candy and of course we had to walk past the jewelery store to pickup my necklace. This guy was even more crazy today and he offered us tea and non stop talking and smoking. Then he started to talk about looking into the sun to become a new person who doesn’t need to eat and can see the future I kind a stopped listening to him but the necklace is nice and I got his business card if anyone want to get in contact with him.

We also got invited over on a evening tea at the tailor, he told us that he was running a family company funded 1953 and they were using more or less any material you can think of, I saw one huge fur-coat which I think was made of fox (not sure though) and with that you will survive another ice age. In the middle of our discussion about how to make the perfect kahwah the local Imam came by and suddenly the topic changed to what the thought about Kashmir which by best description is paradise.

We ended the night with giving away pretty much as much as possible of the stuff we dont want/need anymore. Hats, T-shirts, shovel…everything goes as presents to the hotel staff and they are really happy about it. The also paid our hotel, one month on a hotel including breakfast and dinner ended up at €300, that is crazy cheap!

“You tip 760 rupies?”
-Surprised hotel manager

Minor fail at eating weird stuff day

So today our plan was to eat the weird stuff day but we kind a failed real time, we didn’t find any nice food market. We did find a more regular market though where they sold all other kind of things you can imaging. Most of the food was raw though and even if you could buy anything you could possible need to make a fest we were more into looking for cooked food, instead we found chickens, ducks, turtles, crabs, crayfish, all kind of weird vegetables and meat, plenty of meat laying on the tables in 25 degrees heat for the day, I wouldn’t buy that!

We did however found some cooked food and we started with some bread which kind a looked like a pizza but was just simple bread with seasons, pretty good. After that we went for some barbecued squid, the Chinese girl asked me something which I didn’t understood (as usual) so I just smiled and said yes and the girl took some sort of sauce on the squid and jesus, I have no idea what it was but Chili is for kids compared to this, lucky for me I had a huge beer just beside me and even if it was really good it that sauce almost was just to much.

Straight after the good market we went to a phone store, we just had to check the prices. A Galaxy S4 costs around €80, unlocked of course and that that would be like a tenth of what it cost in Sweden, pretty cheap!

Electronics in China

To buy electronics in China is always interesting. Me and Anton walked around and looked at new phones, tablets and stuff like that and the prices are fantastic, the only “problem” is that the brand is Sumsang instead of Samsung but it maybe doesn’t matter since the price is so low as €40 instead of the €600 for the same model in Sweden. Anton couldn’t stay away from a good deal so after we verified that the phone starts, it looks ok in quality he bought one.

According to the information we found online and in the store the hardware should be the same as in the original, our first peek preview of the phone was also descent, I mean we know its a pirate copy but for that price, amazing. The truth is though that phone is not even close of having the same hardware, the RAM memory is 100Mb and the display doesn’t support tilting and maybe the worst part, the USB charger, I doesn’t even dare to connect it to my computer.

To summarize it I would say that you can find really cheap electronics here, you can do the deal of your life but you can also get scammed. If you go for the real deal, like Apple or Samsung its more or less the same prices as in your home country though.