Buses are significantly more popular than trains for overnight travel in India, with more than half of all household overnight journeys undertaken by bus, according to the country’s first-ever National Household Travel Survey released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) on Monday (October 5, 2026).
Overnight journeys, however, are largely not undertaken for tourism. The pattern changes sharply when it comes to daily travel to work. The survey found that 55.8% of overnight household journeys are undertaken by bus, compared with 17.7% by inter-city railways. Together, buses and railways account for nearly three-fourths, or 73.5%, of all overnight travel. Cars account for 15.1% of such journeys, while two-wheelers make up another 8.8%. The survey found that 70.2% of overnight household trips are for social, communication, and religious purposes. Culture, leisure, sports and tourism account for just 7.4% of such trips. Two-wheelers are the dominant mode of transport for workers, accounting for 42.6% of journeys to fixed or non-fixed workplaces. Their share rises to 52.3% among urban workers, compared with 37.1% in rural areas. The National Household Travel Survey, conducted between July 2025 and June 2026, covered 4,92,023 households and 20,34,371 people across 14,274 villages and 10,377 urban blocks.
