Big Billion Days opens to everyone today1, and most of the network goes into it in the season's usual shape. The East doesn't: Yesterday's bandh blocked highways across Odisha2, and Kolkata bans goods vehicles tomorrow for Mahalaya. The other story is the Gulf, where shipping lines are adding ships to a route they still can't fully reach.
Green the sale season as usual, which can still be busy
Amber something beyond the season is slowing freight
Red something is stopping freight across a state or a route
North
Green
Delhi's roads ran 11 points above usual on Wednesday and again on Thursday5, so the busy streak looks like the usual sale strain, so it's Green.
West
Green
JNPA's pile of boxes waiting for trains inland fell for the third day running, to 1,782 on Thursday from 2,526 the day before6,7, with trucks turned round in about an hour and a half6. Kandla's queue grew to 64 ships waiting8, against a median of 51 since July. The ports are busy but not stuck, and the West's real headache is the air cargo at Navi Mumbai.
South
Green
Chennai's roads ran 9 points above usual on Wednesday and Thursday, the most in the South, and Bengaluru's 5 and 65. That's the sale, as expected.
East
Amber
Yesterday's bandh blocked roads and national highways in ten districts and stopped buses and trucks2. Paradip actually went into it strong, handling 451 thousand tonnes on Wednesday against 279 a year earlier9. Trucks held on NH-16 take a day or two to clear, and tomorrow Kolkata bans goods vehicles from 3 am to 10 pm for Mahalaya3.
Northeast
Amber
NH-10 into Sikkim stays shut at night till Thursday. The worry is tomorrow's Kolkata ban: by my estimate, the Northeast is the zone most exposed when Kolkata's hubs slow down, because so many of its parcels have no other road10.
Central
Green
I found nothing beyond the usual seasonal strain in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh or Vidarbha over the last two days.
Network Insights
1The Gulf, and the price of a detour
Containers to the Gulf, exports
Amber · High cost of delay · High confidence
A 40-foot box from Nhava Sheva, US$, early October11
Umm Qasr~10,000
Dammamup to 9,500
Khor Fakkan6,000–7,000
Shipping lines are adding India–Gulf services because the money is that good: Maersk started a Nhava Sheva–Khor Fakkan shuttle on 24th September, and Marsa a loop from Cochin and JNPA to Fujairah and Sohar. A 40-foot box from Nhava Sheva now costs $6,000–7,000 to Khor Fakkan, up to $9,500 to Dammam and around $10,000 to Umm Qasr, and yet Hapag-Lloyd stopped taking Upper Gulf bookings via Salalah last week, two months after reopening them11. A new service helps only if the lane at the other end is open. Except the other end here is Hormuz: 4 ships crossed on 4th October against about 85 a day before the war, and a tanker was hit off Qatar on Wednesday12.
So there's more space to the Gulf's edge, and less certainty past it. The exposure sits with exporters selling into Iraq, Kuwait and eastern Saudi Arabia, who are paying the highest rates for bookings that can still be pulled.
2The best September trucks ever had
High confidence
Commercial vehicle retail, September, % above last year13
Heavy+46%
Light+34%
Medium+34%
Dealers sold 103,557 commercial vehicles in September, 38% more than a year earlier and the best September on record, with heavy trucks up 46% to 32,31013. Why now? FADA puts it down to bulk fleet buying for steel and cement, mining, replacement, and buying ahead of October price rises13. So is this spare road capacity arriving just in time for Diwali? Well, partly. Though heavy trucks bought on credit got dearer when the RBI raised rates on Wednesday14.
Will the extra trucks take the edge off spot rates on the parcel lanes before Diwali? I don't know, but I do know the exposure sits with shippers buying road space by the load rather than on contract.
3Navi Mumbai, and the free week
Mumbai's air cargo, exports and imports
Amber · High cost of delay · High confidence
Navi Mumbai's airport has waived extra demurrage until 15th October, and promised more experienced staff, live flight-clearance updates and a 24/7 helpdesk for brokers4. It needed to: about 1,000 tonnes of imports were sitting on dollies, flight checks were running past 72 hours, and Challenge Group said freighters were leaving with little cargo or none15. Why are the freighters there at all? The main airport stopped taking them in August, for runway and cargo-apron works that run to May 2027, so this isn't a teething week, it's the setup for the whole peak16. The waiver is generous, but it pays for the wait, it doesn't shorten it.
From the 16th, the waiting is billed to the importer again. The exposure sits with pharma and electronics shippers whose Mumbai imports land in the busiest weeks of the year.
The lanes I'm watching
NH-16 through OdishaAmber
East coast trunk, Kolkata–Chennai
Blocked at Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Balasore, Bhadrak and Berhampur during Thursday's bandh, all of them on this road. Amber today and tomorrow while held trucks clear, then Green if nothing new comes.
NH-10 Siliguri–GangtokAmber
Sikkim's one and only trunk road
Shut to all vehicles 9 pm to 6 am on the Sevoke–Rangpo stretch till 15th October, and again 26th October–5th November17.
NH-44 Jammu–SrinagarAmber
Kashmir's all-weather link
Very slow on Wednesday and Thursday with single-lane stretches, breakdowns and herds near Banihal–Nachlana; Kashmir-bound oil and gas tankers held 7 am to 7 pm18.
NH-154 Pathankot–MandiAmber
Into Kangra, Mandi and on to Kullu–Manali
Dug up for repairs at Thakurdwara near Palampur, with long queues at peak hours; the work is stuck until water pipes and phone cables under the road are moved, and no end date is given19.
Measured this morning
City roads against usual, daily, 2–8 Oct5amber = 10+ over
Kolkata is the one that stands out: 15 to 20 points over usual every weekday this week, before the Puja curbs even begin on the 13th. Delhi has held at 11 since the march, and every other city stayed under 10.
Kolkata+15
Delhi+11
Mumbai+9
Chennai+9
Ahmedabad+7
Pune+6
Bengaluru+6
Hyderabad+5
Kochi+4
Jaipur+2
Sources
Built from public sources only. I rate against the season, because a sale week is never going to look like a quiet week in April, right? A Red road drags down the hubs at both ends, and a hub stays Amber about two days after its cause clears, longer after a Red. Air shows up only with measured numbers (AAI, WorldACD). Confidence is High when the facts are dated and primary or measured, Medium when they rest on a proxy or a forecast. If I am wrong, we'll find out in the subsequent weeks. The ratings are my judgement on the likelihood of on-time delivery or cost-impact, not measured service levels or actual cost estimates. Map boundaries: DataMeet, CC BY 4.0.