Mango Mela 2016 Information

Address: Handloom Haat, Janpath
Getting there: Enter Janpath from outer circle and park outside Fresco / Bunta Bar /Shiv Sagar restaurant
Nearest Metro Station: Rajiv Chowk, CP
Timing: 11.30 am to 8 pm
On till: 30th June 2016
Cultural Evenings: 18th and 25th June, 6.30 pm onwards
Lifts available.

If there is one thing great about Indian summers, its the fact that we get to eat mangoes of all sort of names, shapes and varieties. Handloom Haat – Janpath came to life recently when the King of Fruits, mango arrived here in all its glory all the way from West Bengal. We visited this Mango Mela last Saturday when it was extremely hot and humid. This was a new venue for Mango Mela and quite an unusual one, this was earlier held at Dilli Haat, Pitampura. But we are not complaining as we got to visit the fair in a fully air conditioned hall instead of an open air venue. The fair is organised by West Bengal Government and is happening on second floor of Handloom Haat.

They have a few stalls displaying mangoes from West Bengal’s Malda region. Some of the mango varieties are well known to Delhiites like Langra (Lengra in Bangla) but some are unusual and unheard of like Himsagar and Amrapali. The vendors happily cut small slices of mangoes for buyers to try out before buying. We bought a few kilos of almost all available varieties. They also had mangoes from other districts in West Bengal – Hooghli, Birbhum and Dinajpur.

A couple of stalls are also selling mango based products like pickles, kasundi, juices,  aam papad, aam chur (dried raw mango) etc.

We bought small bottles of assorted pickles and chutneys from here. Very affordable, hand made and absolutely free of preservatives, these are quite different from the branded varieties of pickles in Delhi NCR.

Mango and Mishti

No Bengali event is complete without Mishti. They have a counter selling sweets, many of which are mango based. We tried a Mango Sundae and Mango Doi. Both were awesome and had mango at the heart of the dishes.

Not just mangoes…

In a separate section, they have Bengal Handloom-Handicraft Expo going on alongside. We took a round of this section and saw kurtas, handicraft items, hand painted t-shirts, Bengali sarees and furniture items on display.

Trying to adjust our bags that were heavy with all sorts of mangoes we saw Bengal’s Baul dance in the courtyard on our way out. The rendition of these bhakti songs were as sweet as the mangoes and doi we tried in the Mela.