In the Indian city of Udaipur, flat roofs become places for living, yoga, laundry. Credit:iStock

Job done, she towels the kid, wraps her in a soft rose-coloured sarong and sets her happily in the sun to dry. Two or three times during the process the woman gives us a shy smile. She knows we're there, watching, but there's no sense that we shouldn't be, or that she shouldn't be living her life in full view of the world. It is what it is, simple and dignified, and we are all part of it.

Down in the populous street, samesame. Our friend in Bundi takes us for the best marsala chai in town. It's a slow preparation, from scratch, with pepper, ginger and cardamom ground by hand on the stone floor, all of a metre from an open drain. It's not a sewer, nothing noxious, but the entire shop is perhaps 2m x 4m and we, four of us, are in back. With the chai wallah and a couple of visiting Brahmin that makes seven, so the business of cooking, spectating, serving and drinking becomes an ancient ritualised dance, every move within an elegant loose-weave pattern.

Across the narrow street, a man makes bespoke suits. He lays out the pattern and cuts the fine cloth not just in view of the street, but actually in it. His shop is a five-sided turquoise-painted cube that frames him and his ancient Singer treadle machine like a gallery image. Next door, a carpenter makes faux-old (but actually rather nice) tables, again much of it in the street. Next again, a barber. The high-chroma stream of pedestrians diverts around them, oblivious to the torrent of tuk-tuks and taxis and five-to-a-bike mopeds that simply, somehow, accommodate. It's mad, it's unregulated, and somehow it works – not just in terms of utility, but in generating a deadpan warmth in which the chaos of life is uncomplainingly held. Proximity generates care.

And yes, of course, it's India – so along with the charm, there's the dust and heat, the street dogs and pigs, the long-horn cattle and not-quite-lost-but-certainly-not-won battle with entropy. But I can't help wondering – why is such charm impossible in Sydney? Why is intricacy anathema?