The first bazaar which we were let loose in was a food bazaar which was wet underfoot and smelled of fish with nasty things and chook’s feet on display.

The next was a small bazaar in the village of Masouleh, one of the ‘different’ villages. As the village was a tourist attraction the main ‘street’ had a bazaar but I saw nothing which I wanted to buy and we spend most of our time in a teahouse. The day was cold and foggy and hot tea was welcome.

Small bazaar in Masouleh

Our pleas to be allowed to go shopping for cool cotton mantos fell on deaf ears and it wasn’t until towards the end of the tour that we were again allowed out on our own to shop.

However, we were eventually let loose after the usual injunction to be careful crossing roads. To begin with I was a bit concerned that I’d get lost and not find my way back to the meeting place but that proved to be unfounded; after an hour or so I kept on running into others from the group - conspicuous by the way we dressed – and had realised that I was passing the same stalls and not just look-alike ones.

Typical stall - very colourful

At the bazaar in Kerman we were able to buy sachets of saffron already packaged for export and I brought some back for each of my daughters as well as for myself. At the bazaar in Esfahan we were shown a block printer at work. I have done block printing on paper when rubber stamping and it is extremely difficult to be accurate even with only one stamp. To use multiple blocks and multiple colours is extremely skilled and I bought a fairly large tablecloth with an overall multi-coloured pattern. So far, I have found only one misaligned bit in the whole cloth. It is remarkable work.

Detail of block-printed tablecloth

The best piece of kitsch - I love looking for kitsch - was a yellow ceramic knitted teddy bear with every stitch in high relief. I regret that I didn’t think it would be either kind or polite to photograph it - and I was definitely NOT going to buy it.