Lives in Transit: India’s Travelling Trader Families

While returning from office last evening, I halted at a traffic signal behind a small but unusual goods vehicle. The rear carriage, meant for transporting cargo, had been ingeniously divided into vertical tiers. On the lowest level, two family members sat among neatly stacked clay pots arranged almost like a storefront. The middle tier resembled a compact storeroom. Above, bedding, clothes, and curtains hung along the frame, forming what appeared to be a makeshift bedroom.

This was not merely transport: it was home, shop, warehouse, and livelihood woven into one moving structure.

In my travels across India, I have often seen travelling trader families walking with tents and bundles balanced on their heads. This vehicle felt like an “upgrade”: a mobile ecosystem of survival. Yet mobility for such tradespeople is not adventure; it is economic necessity. They move from town to town selling pottery, utensils, tools, toys, or offering repair services. Weekly haats, roadside halts, and village fairs are their marketplaces. Demand dictates direction. Seasons dictate sustenance. The entire family participates; skills pass from one generation to the next.

Mobility, however, carries its own fragility: limited access to healthcare, schooling, documentation, and social protection. Operating within India’s vast informal economy, they quietly sustain local markets while remaining largely unseen.

As I sat in the comfort of my car, I was reminded how often development efforts overlook those who live between destinations. Yet some of the most meaningful work I have witnessed, and had the privilege to contribute to, has been among precisely such communities.

For travelling trader families, the road is not a path to somewhere else. It is the ground beneath their existence: their workplace, their shelter, their inheritance, and their hope: carried forward, mile after mile.