Traveling on the Grand Trunk Road

Text and Photography by Ar. Jinisha Jain

For me, traveling on the Grand Trunk, alias the GT road has always invoked the lure of a joie de vivre ride. Conjuring a surreal jugglery of images from the past, it morphs and paints destinations and characters into picture-perfect illustrations: landscapes whittled by hills, rocky passes, fertile valleys, rivers and plains; charming countryside with hamlets and agrarian burjis(straw huts) amid cropped fields; aspiring cities embellished by the sensuous skylines of their forts, the mosques and the mausoleums; the aristocracy entouring on elephants with gilded howdahs, their silk drapes fluttering in the wind; the bazaars swarming with wrangling merchants and their camels, horses or even donkeys laden with merchandise; colorfuly attired gypsies roaming from one village to the other; Kheras (mounds) of the dead towns; sites of great battles; the settlements of mystic origins and much more to the fetish of the effortless, friskful imagination. Since the Aryan invasion of the subcontinent, it has served as a corridor for the movement of invaders, adventurers, armies, goods and ideas. This was the road that witnessed the Scythians, Huns, Seljuks, Tartars, Mongols, Sassanians, Turks, Mughals and Durranis making successive inroads into the territories, hitherto uncontrolled beyond the Indus. The likes included Timur, Babar, Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali. Along this road were the empires expanded; the political, the trade and the sacred magnets founded, erased and re-raised; and the genealogies of the patron dynasties inscribed on the most splendid monuments. More than a road, it is a long-winding narration of a timeless journey!

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