Burrabazar

One of the largest wholesale markets in India, working the lanes east of Howrah Bridge since the eighteenth century and organised by trade rather than by shop: cotton on one street, gems on Banstala Gali, spices, chinaware and paper on the next. Around fifty thousand people move through daily, and the choreography of it all is the reason to come; souvenir hunting is beside the point here, looking and photographing are not. Weekday mornings, light luggage, no particular hurry.

Fifty thousand people a day and a whole street per trade: commerce as spectacle