What to buy in Pune

Both travel well when bought packed.

Paithani is Maharashtra's handloom silk saree, woven with zari, metallic thread. At Kapse Paithani, on Kumthekar Road in Sadashiv Peth and on Prabhat Road, the weaving family from Yeola, the home town of the craft, sells pieces from entry level to heirloom brocades that take months on the loom. Staff explain the motifs, such as the peacock, the lotus and the asawali vine, and the grades of weaving. Real handloom costs well above powerloom and comes with its provenance, so give a serious purchase time. The saree houses of Laxmi Road also stock Paithani and other ethnic wear.

Jewellery. On Laxmi Road at Kunte Chowk, P N Gadgil & Sons, founded in 1832 in Sangli and on Laxmi Road since 1958, shows the traditional Maharashtrian forms: the Kolhapuri saaj necklace, the thushi choker, the nath nose ring and temple jewellery. Pieces are hallmarked and fixed-price, and staff are used to explaining regional designs to visitors.

Tulshibaug Market, a dense grid of lanes around a Peshwa-era Ram temple in Budhwar Peth, is the best hunting for small souvenirs: brass and copperware, puja items, bangles and bindis, ittars (oil-based perfumes) from about ₹50, wind chimes and kitchen things. Allow a couple of hours; it sits between Laxmi Road, the Mahatma Phule Mandai and the Dagdusheth temple.

Juna Bazaar, Pune's flea market, runs only on Wednesdays and Sundays along the road near Shaniwar Wada: gramophones and vinyl, brass figurines, old door knobs and vintage cameras, from about ₹150–200. It is a genuine old-goods market, so come in the morning and look closely at what you buy.

For cheap clothes and accessories there is Fashion Street in Camp, about four hundred stalls with prices from about ₹80–100, and Hong Kong Lane in Deccan Gymkhana, with sunglasses, jewellery, bags and kurtas from about ₹100. Copper with Pune's dimpled, hand-beaten finish comes from the coppersmiths of Tambat Ali in Kasba Peth, a lane that has worked copper for some three hundred years. More on the markets of Pune page.

Appa Balwant Chowk, which everyone calls ABC, has traded in books since the 1950s: dozens of shopfronts and pavement stalls with Marathi literature, classics, second-hand novels and textbooks, usually at a discount, and haggling over used books is expected. International Book Service in Deccan Gymkhana, opened in 1931, is usually named as the city's oldest bookshop; Express Book Service on East Street in Camp is one of the last of the cantonment's old bookshops; Pagdandi in Baner is a bookstore and cafe with new titles from independent publishers. More on the bookstores in Pune page.