Ooty Municipal Market

Up to 1,500 stalls packed into narrow lanes with murals on the walls, and four to five thousand people moving through them on an ordinary day. This is the market the town actually runs on: Nilgiri carrots and hill vegetables piled by the crate, flowers, spices, freshly packed tea and coffee, small bottles of eucalyptus and lemongrass oil. Weekday mornings are the calmest hour and the best light, before the lanes tighten up. It makes a different kind of sense from the souvenir shops on Commercial Road.

Carrots, flowers, spices and fresh-packed tea in the lanes locals shop in