Shopping streets are those iconic alleys that have the city’s soul for sale, at cheapest rates and Latika Payak bargains out five brilliant streets that will delight your inner shopaholic. Shopping on the streets could well become the best way of knowing a city. The real city, that is. More so if you’re the kind who likes to browse stuff with one hand, while slurping from a dripping kulfi in the other. You can’t do that in the clinical malls, you know. And that’s exactly why shopping streets still rule the hearts of many – for being casual and cheap.

“That’s why we go to the streets, right?” asks Sneha Premnarayan, a Mumbai-based stylist, “especially towards month-end when we can’t afford to be hoity-toity about brands. Shopping streets is where we go.” How true!

But price isn’t the only reason why people gravitate towards such streets. “What you find on streets you rarely find in the mall, however hard you try,” Sarita K, a mother of two from Delhi opines, “especially junk jewellery.” Many will agree to that too.

So the reign of shopping streets has been undiminished all over India. And while walking through them, one can’t help but marvel at the diverse personalities of these shopping streets. They range from Delhi’s chaotic, grimy nook of Chandni Chowk to the fashionable baubles strewn on the cobbled streets of Mumbai.

But what do these places really have in store for a shopaholic? Read on: