The floating market that operates on the lake each morning is supplemented throughout the day by vendor shikaras that come directly to moored houseboats — a floating market brought to your door rather than requiring you to go to it. Selling flowers, fresh vegetables, crisps and soft drinks, jewellery, postcards, papier-mâché goods, and even a floating massage service, these itinerant vendors pole alongside and wait patiently while you inspect their offerings.
The flower vendors are the most pleasant: a shikara loaded to the gunwales with fresh lotus flowers, chrysanthemums, marigolds, and water lilies, arriving early in the morning when they are freshest. Buying a handful of lotus flowers and a cup of kahwa on the houseboat deck is a combination that earns its cliché. The salesmanship of the souvenir vendors is persistent but generally good-humoured; the prices are negotiable and the items are the same as in the Boulevard Road shops. For houseboat guests who plan to buy small craft items anyway, buying from the floating vendors is marginally more interesting than buying from a shop.