Life in a House Boat: Part II

Welcome to Life in a House Boat Part II. The snap above is a relatively rare one since most of the views of the house boats are frontal because the boats are lined up side-by-side. I had to actually look for this view of a house boat. Consider there are 950 house boats and one realises that the Dal Lake is one crowded place. This is the typical design of a house boat. The entrance in the front (to the left of the snap) leads to the rooms. There are three rooms to a boat and some boats have a frame on the roof where a shamiana can be put up for roof parties.
 [Click on the snaps for bigger image]
Dal Lake has a fulfleged market based on house boats.

 Similarly, there are shops along the banks as well. This was an early morning snap and that is why all the shops are shut.  

Shikaras are the lifeline of the Dal Lake. Everything is supplied to the house boats through shikaras. There are complete shops based on shikaras as the snap below will show.

Josh naturally had to try his hand on the shikara.

 The CRPF has a presence on the Dal Lake and we witnessed one patrol boat moving around on the lake.

Dal Lake has a proper floating vegetable, flowers and fruit market which comes together every morning at 5.30AM and disperses by 6.00AM. This market caters for the house boat owners and locals and draws a handful of tourists everyday. We decided to take a look. The shikaras here are different - not the tourist variety - they have no roof.

 The flowers were really awesome!

The rest of the guys were selling vegetables and fruits.

The quality of the veggies seemed pretty good.

This gentleman was having the early morning blues.

This was truly an unique experience.