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A Floral Trail: India’s Most Iconic Flower Markets
by Amishi Sota September, 02 , 2025
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India grows over 2.2 million tonnes of flowers every year, and before they end up on your tables, in your temples, or on your Instagram feed, most of them take a detour through one of the country’s 2,500+ phool mandis.
It’s a whole ecosystem that runs while most of us are asleep & if you’ve never been, it’s worth setting your alarm for.
Here’s your guide to India’s most iconic flower markets, part cultural safari, part sensory overload, and fully unforgettable.
📍 Ghazipur, East Delhi
🕔 3 AM – 7 PM
Delhi doesn’t do anything halfway & Ghazipur proves it. Asia’s largest wholesale flower market, Ghazipur is where over 300 shops and stalls trade flowers by the truckload.
Step in at 3 AM, and you’ll find porters unloading crates of gladioli, orchids from Thailand, lilies from Holland, tuberoses from Uttar Pradesh, and roses in every possible shade. The air is thick with the smell of jasmine and negotiation. Shopkeepers sit cross-legged stringing motia garlands, others are trimming stems, shouting prices, or arranging towers of marigolds for a wedding the next day.
Before 2011, Delhi’s flower trade was scattered, from Mehrauli to Chandni Chowk to Lado Sarai, but now Ghazipur is the nerve center. Temples, five-star hotels, event planners, and florists all source their blooms from here.
Go for: The 4–5 AM peak hour, when the market is buzzing, the freshest flowers are unpacked, and photographers get their most dramatic shots.
📍 Near City Market, Bengaluru
🕔 4 AM – 10 PM
KR Market, also called Huvina Market (meaning “flower market” in Kannada) is a sensory explosion. Built in 1928 on the site of an Anglo-Mysore War battlefield, it still carries its red-and-white colonial architecture as a backdrop to piles of marigolds, roses, and jasmine strings.
The market is divided into two sections: one for loose flowers, petals, and garlands, and the other for exotic blooms, Dutch roses, anthuriums, and lilies. Watching vendors here is mesmerizing, they work with precision, tying garlands with a speed that feels like choreography.
Go for: The 4 AM madness, it’s the flower world’s version of a stock exchange bell. The city’s temples, wedding halls, and puja rooms are supplied from here before the morning traffic wakes up.
📍 Dadar West, near Dadar Station
🕔 6 AM – 8 PM
Mumbai mornings smell of rain, salt & Dadar flowers. Known locally as Phool Gully, Dadar is the beating heart of Mumbai’s floral economy, with over 600 stalls crammed into narrow lanes.
By 6 AM, the crowd is so thick that you might not even need to walk, the human tide carries you along. Roses, marigolds, chrysanthemums, and jasmines fly off the stalls to feed temples, weddings, and events. Seasonal flowers change the market’s mood every few months, from magnolias and winter jasmine in January to dahlias, tulips, and gerberas in the monsoon.
You’ll also find women selling gajras (hair garlands) that smell divine, and decorators haggling hard for bulk orders. Despite the chaos, Dadar has an irresistible energy that makes it one of Mumbai’s most photogenic corners.
Go for: Sunrise. The good stuff is gone by 9 AM, and after that, you’ll mostly find the leftovers (and a lot more elbows).
📍 Below Howrah Bridge, Kolkata
🕔 Open all day (but best at dawn)
If there was ever a place that embodied Kolkata’s grit and poetry in one frame, it’s Mullick Ghat. Sitting right under the iconic Howrah Bridge, this market is one of the largest flower markets in Asia, and its roots run deep, right back to the late 1700s.
Named after Rammohan Mallick, who built the nearby Jagannath Ghat in the 18th century, this market is steeped in history. The city’s colonial past still echoes here: the market boomed during the Victorian Era, when Kolkata was the capital of British India, and it still supplies blooms for weddings, pujas, and festivals across the state.
The market sits close to two other botanical landmarks, the Indian Botanical Garden (established in 1793 by Dr. William Roxburgh, the father of Indian botany) and the Botanical Survey of India headquarters, which continues to document the nation’s floral biodiversity. Perhaps this is why Kolkata’s flower market is such a melting pot of species, marigolds drape like fire, lotuses sit fresh from the ponds, roses glow in the early light.
Go for: Sunrise. The first rays of light catch the garlands and the bridge overhead, making the whole place glow. The chaos, the shouting vendors, the scent of tuberose, all of it is overwhelming and unforgettable.
📍 RS Puram, Coimbatore
🕔 Open 24 hours
If flowers had a capital in Tamil Nadu, it would be Coimbatore. The RS Puram flower is the nerve center of South India’s flower supply chain, sending jasmine strings and marigold garlands to cities across the state, even as far as Kerala and Karnataka.
Step inside and you’re hit with a heady mix of fragrances, jasmine, tuberose, rose, kanakambaram (crossandra), the same flowers you see adorning women’s hair, temple idols, and wedding halls every day. Here, flowers are not a luxury but a daily ritual.
This market operates like a living organism: vendors squatting on the ground, weighing flowers on old-fashioned scales; decorators loading sacks for temple festivals; and women buying a few rupees’ worth of fresh malli poo (jasmine) for their hair.
Go for: 5–6 AM for the peak hustle. The rest of the day is quieter, but the magic is in watching Tamil Nadu’s flower economy wake up.
📍 Jamalpur, Old City, Ahmedabad
🕔 Open 24 hours
Jamalpur feels like a fairground first thing in the morning. Baskets overflow with roses, lilies, jasmines, it’s a riot of scent and color. Vendors shout out prices like auctioneers, bargaining happens at lightning speed, and every few minutes someone rushes past with another delivery for a wedding or puja.
There’s an infectious energy to Jamalpur. There’s an urgency to the pace here: bargaining happens in quick-fire Gujarati, bundles of flowers get whisked away to wedding decorators, and kids run about delivering small orders.
Go for: Dawn. And then head to nearby Manek Chowk for chai and a plate of fafda-jalebi. Flowers + fried food = best morning ever.
📍 Ernakulam, Cochin
🕔 5 AM – 10 AM
Cochin’s flower market may not be the biggest, but it has a quiet grace, very much like Kerala itself. Located in Ernakulam, it stocks the staples, marigolds, roses, but what makes it special is its range of tropical blooms: heliconias, birds of paradise, anthuriums. These are the flowers you’ll find at Kerala weddings, temple festivals, and resort decorations.
Because the market is smaller and less chaotic than its northern counterparts, you can actually linger. Vendors here are chatty and happy to teach you the local names of flowers. The pace is slower, which makes it perfect for travelers who want to soak in the atmosphere without being jostled.
Pair your visit with a spice market stop nearby, nothing captures Kerala’s essence like the smell of cardamom, cinnamon, and fresh jasmine mingling in the air.
Go for: Early morning, especially if you’re already on a spice market trail. The mix of flowers and spices makes for a very Kerala kind of morning.
Festivals in India may run on sugar and flowers, but it’s these mandis that make sure the flowers show up on time. The next time you buy flowers, remember: it probably started its journey at 4 AM, under a tarpaulin, in a mandi full of shouting vendors, sweating porters, and sleepy photographers.
Sweet, isn’t it?