Renumbered_National_Highways_map_of_India_(Schematic)_hilight_19_44

The Grand Trunk Road (formerly known as Uttarapath, Sarak-e-Azam, Shah Rah-e-Azam, Badshahi Sarak, and Long Walk) is one of Asia's oldest and longest major roads. For at least 2,500 years it has linked

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

to the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

. It runs roughly The Atlantic: "India's Grand Trunk Road"
/ref> from

Teknaf Teknaf ( bn, টেকনাফ ''Ṭeknaf'') is an upazila of Cox's Bazar District in the Division of Chittagong, Bangladesh. It forms the southernmost point in mainland Bangladesh (St. Martin's Island is the southernmost point). The name of the ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

on the border with Myanmar west to

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, passing through Chittagong and

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city i ...

in Bangladesh,

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

Prayagraj Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the administrat ...

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

, and Amritsar in India, and

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...

, Rawalpindi, and

Peshawar Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the ancient Indian Maurya Empire, built this highway along an ancient route called Uttarapatha in the 3rd century BCE, extending it from the mouth of the

Ganges The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is ...

to the north-western frontier of the Empire. Further improvements to this road were made under

Ashoka Ashoka (, ; also ''Asoka''; 304 – 232 BCE), popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was the third emperor of the Maurya Empire of Indian subcontinent during to 232 BCE. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, s ...

.Romila Thapar, p. 236
Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300
/ref> The old route was re-aligned by Sher Shah Suri to

Sonargaon Sonargaon ( bn, সোনারগাঁও; pronounced as ''Show-naar-gaa''; lit. ''Golden Hamlet'') is a historic city in central Bangladesh. It corresponds to the Sonargaon Upazila of Narayanganj District in Dhaka Division. Sonargaon is on ...

and Rohtas.Vadime Elisseeff, p. 159-162
The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce
/ref> The Afghan end of the road was rebuilt under

Mahmud Shah Durrani Mahmud Shah Durrani ( Persian: ; 1769 – 18 April 1829), also known as Shah Mahmud, or Mahmud Shah Abdali, was the ruler of the Durrani Empire between 1801 and 1803, and again between 1809 and 1818. From 1818 to 1829, he was the emir of Herat. A ...

. The road was considerably rebuilt in the British period between 1833 and 1860. The road coincides with current N1, Feni,( Chittagong to

), N4 & N405 (Dhaka to

Sirajganj Sirajganj ( bn, সিরাজগঞ্জ) is a city in north-western Bangladesh on the right bank of the Jamuna River. It is the administrative headquarters of Sirajganj District, and with a population of 167,200 is the fourteenth most popul ...

), N507 (Sirajganj to

Natore Natore district is a district of Rajshahi Division located in northern Bangladesh. It borders the metropolitan city of Rajshahi, and used to be part of Rajshahi district. History Natore was the District Headquarters of Rajshahi from 1769 to 182 ...

) and N6 (Natore to Rajshai towards

Purnea Purnia ()(also Romanization, romanized as Purnea) is a city that serves as the administrative headquarters of both Purnia district and Purnia division in the Indian state of Bihar. Total geographical area of Purnia Urban Agglomeration is ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

; NH 12 (

Bakkhali Bakkhali is a village within the jurisdiction of the Namkhana police station in the Namkhana CD block in the Kakdwip subdivision of the South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. History Sir Andrew Fraser, Lieutenant Go ...

), NH 27 (

Patna Patna ( ), historically known as Pataliputra, is the capital and largest city of the state of Bihar in India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Patna had a population of 2.35 million, making it the 19th largest city in India. ...

), NH 19 (

Agra Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra i ...

NH 44 National Highway 44 (NH 44) is a major north–south National Highway in India and is the longest in the country. It passes through the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, in addition to the states of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, ...

(

Jalandhar Jalandhar is the third most-populous city in the Indian state of Punjab and the largest city in Doaba region. Jalandhar lies alongside the Grand Trunk Road and is a well-connected rail and road junction. Jalandhar is northwest of the state ...

via

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament Ho ...

Sonipat Sonipat is a city, municipal corporation and administrative headquarter in Sonipat district of Haryana state of India. It comes under the National Capital Region and is around from New Delhi. It is also around 214 km (128 miles) southwest o ...

, Panipat,

Ambala Ambala () is a city and a municipal corporation in Ambala district in the state of Haryana, India, located on the border with the Indian state of Punjab and in proximity to both states capital Chandigarh. Politically, Ambala has two sub-are ...

and

Ludhiana Ludhiana ( ) is the most populous and the largest city in the Indian state of Punjab. The city has an estimated population of 1,618,879 2011 census and distributed over , making Ludhiana the most densely populated urban centre in the state. I ...

) and NH 3 (

Attari Attari, also spelled Atari, is a village of Amritsar district in the Punjab state of India, 3 km from the Indo-Pakistani border at Wagah. It is situated 25 km west of the Sikh holy city of Amritsar, and is the last Indian station on ...

, Amritsar in India towards

) via

Wagah Wagah ( ur, ) or Wagha (Shahmukhi pnb, ) is a village and union council (UC 181) located in the Wahga Zone near Lahore City District, Pakistan. The town is famous for the Wagah border ceremony and also serves as a goods transit terminal and ...

; N-5 (

, Gujranwala, Gujrat,

Lalamusa Lala Musa (; ur, , pa, ), is a city located in the Gujrat District of the Punjab province, Pakistan with a population of 91,500 in 2018. History Toponymy Lala Musa is a combination of two nouns which mean Brother Musa with ''Lala'' (from v ...

, Jhelum, Rawalpindi,

and Khyber Pass towards

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...

in Afghanistan) in Pakistan and

AH1 Asian Highway 1 (AH1) is the longest route of the Asian Highway Network, running from Tokyo, Japan via Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran to the border between Turkey and Bulgaria west of Istanbul ...

(

Torkham Torkham (; ps, , translit=tūrxam) is a major border crossing between the Pakistani city of Torkham and Afghanistan, located along the Grand Trunk Road on the international border between the two countries. It connects Nangarhar province of A ...

) to Gazani in Afghanistan. Over the centuries, the road acted as one of the major trade routes in the region and facilitated both travel and postal communication. The Grand Trunk Road is still used for transportation in present-day Indian subcontinent, where parts of the road have been widened and included in the national highway system.

History

Ancient times

The

Buddhist literature Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition. The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts a ...

and

Indian epics Indian epic poetry is the epic poetry written in the Indian subcontinent, traditionally called ''Kavya'' (or ''Kāvya''; Sanskrit: काव्य, IAST: ''kāvyá''). The ''Ramayana'' and the ''Mahabharata'', which were originally composed in ...

such as

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the s ...

provide the existence of Grand Trunk road even before the Maurya Empire and was called Uttarapatha or the "Northern road". The road connected the eastern region of

with

and

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

Mauryan Empire

The precursor of the modern Grand Trunk road was built by the emperor Chandragupta Maurya and was based on the Persian

Royal Road The Royal Road was an ancient highway reorganized and rebuilt by the Persian king Darius the Great (Darius I) of the first (Achaemenid) Persian Empire in the 5th century BC. Darius built the road to facilitate rapid communication on the western ...

(more accurately, its eastern stretch, the

Great Khurasan Road The (Great) Khurasan Road was the great trunk road connecting Mesopotamia to the Iranian Plateau and thence to Central Asia, History of China, China, and the Indus Valley. It is very well-documented in the Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid period, when it ...

that ran from Media to Bactria). During the time of the Mauryan Empire in the 3rd century BCE, overland trade between

and several parts of

Western Asia Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...

and Bactria world went through the cities of the north-west, primarily

Takshashila Taxila or Takshashila (; sa, तक्षशिला; pi, ; , ; , ) is a city in Punjab, Pakistan. Located in the Taxila Tehsil of Rawalpindi District, it lies approximately northwest of the Islamabad–Rawalpindi metropolitan area ...

and Purushapura modern-day

(in present-day in

). Takshashila was well connected by roads with other parts of the Mauryan Empire. The Mauryas had maintained this very ancient highway from Takshashila to Patliputra (present-day

in India). Chandragupta Maurya had a whole army of officials overseeing the maintenance of this road as told by the Greek diplomat

Megasthenes Megasthenes ( ; grc, Μεγασθένης, c. 350 BCE– c. 290 BCE) was an ancient Greek historian, diplomat and Indian ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period. He described India in his book '' Indica'', which is now lost, but ha ...

who spent fifteen years at the Mauryan court. Constructed in eight stages, this road is said to have connected the cities of Purushapura,

Hastinapur Hastinapur is a city in the Meerut district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. ''Hastinapura'', described in Hindu texts such as the ''Mahabharata'' and the Puranas as the capital of the Kuru Kingdom, is also mentioned in ancient Jain texts ...

Kanyakubja Kannauj ( Hindustani pronunciation: ənːɔːd͡ʒ is a city, administrative headquarters and a municipal board or Nagar Palika Parishad in Kannauj district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The city's name is a corrupted form of the c ...

, Prayag, Patliputra and

Tamralipta Tamralipta or Tamralipti ( pi, Tāmaliti) was a port city and capital of Suhma Kingdom in ancient Bengal, located on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. The Tamluk town in present-day Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, is generally identified as the sit ...

, a distance of around . The route of Chandragupta was built over the ancient " Uttarapatha" or the Northern Road, which had been mentioned by

Pāṇini , era = ;;6th–5th century BCE , region = Indian philosophy , main_interests = Grammar, linguistics , notable_works = ' ( Classical Sanskrit) , influenced= , notable_ideas=Descriptive linguistics (Devanaga ...

. The emperor

had it recorded in his

edict An edict is a decree or announcement of a law, often associated with monarchism, but it can be under any official authority. Synonyms include "dictum" and "pronouncement". ''Edict'' derives from the Latin edictum. Notable edicts * Telepinu Pro ...

about having trees planted, wells built at every half

kos Kos or Cos (; el, Κως ) is a Greek island, part of the Dodecanese island chain in the southeastern Aegean Sea. Kos is the third largest island of the Dodecanese by area, after Rhodes and Karpathos; it has a population of 36,986 (2021 census), ...

and many "nimisdhayas", which is often translated as rest-houses along the route for the travelers. The emperor

Kanishka Kanishka I (Sanskrit: कनिष्क, '; Greco-Bactrian: Κανηϸκε ''Kanēške''; Kharosthi: 𐨐𐨞𐨁𐨮𐨿𐨐 '; Brahmi: '), or Kanishka, was an emperor of the Kushan dynasty, under whose reign (c. 127–150 CE) the empire ...

is also known to have controlled the Uttarapatha.

Suri and Mughal Empires

Sher Shah Suri Sher Shah Suri ( ps, شیرشاه سوری) (1472, or 1486 – 22 May 1545), born Farīd Khān ( ps, فرید خان) , was the founder of the Sur Empire in India, with its capital in Sasaram in modern-day Bihar. He standardized the silver coin ...

, the medieval ruler of the

Sur Empire The Sur Empire ( ps, د سرو امپراتورۍ, dë sru amparāturəi; fa, امپراطوری سور, emperâturi sur) was an Afghan dynasty which ruled a large territory in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent for nearly 16 year ...

, took to repair The Chandragupta's Royal Road in the 16th century. The old route was further rerouted at

and Rohtas and its breadth increased, a sarai was built, the number of kos minars and baolis increased. Gardens were also built alongside some sections of the highway. Those who stopped at the sarai were provided food for free. His son

Islam Shah Suri Islam Shah Suri (reigned: 1545–1554) was the second ruler of the Suri dynasty which ruled the part of India in the mid-16th century. His original name was Jalal Khan and he was the second son of Sher Shah Suri. History On his father's de ...

constructed an additional sarai in-between every sarai originally built by Sher Shah Suri on the road toward Bengal. More sarais were built under the

Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

. Jahangir under his reign issued a decree that all sarais be built of burnt brick and stone.

Broad-leaved tree A broad-leaved, broad-leaf, or broadleaf tree is any tree within the diverse botanical group of angiosperms that has flat leaves and produces seeds inside of fruits. It is one of two general types of trees, the other being a conifer, a tree with ne ...

s were planted in the stretch between Lahore and Agra and he built bridges over all water bodies that were situated on the path of the highways. The route was referred to as "Sadak-e-Azam" by Suri, and "Badshahi Sadak" during Mughals.

British Empire

In the 1830s the East India Company started a program of metalled road construction, for both commercial and administrative purposes. The road, now named the Grand Trunk Road, from

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, through

, to

was rebuilt at a cost of £1000/mile. The road is mentioned in a number of literary works including those of Foster and Rudyard Kipling. Kipling described the road as: "Look! Look again! and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims – and potters – all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood. And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles – such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world."A description of the road by Kipling, found both in his letters and i
the novel ''Kim''

Republic of India

The ensemble of historic sites along the road in India was submitted to the tentative list of

UNESCO World Heritage Sites A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...

in 2015, under the title ''"Sites along the Uttarapath, Badshahi Sadak, Sadak-e-Azam,Banho, Grand Trunk Road"''.

Psephologists Psephology (; from Greek el, ψῆφος, psephos, pebble, label=none) or political analysis is a branch of political science, the "quantitative analysis of elections and balloting". As such, psephology attempts to explain elections using the ...

sometimes refer to the area around the GT Road as the ''"GT Road belt"'' it is also known as Gujarat road sometimes within the context of elections. For example, during the

elections in Haryana Elections in Haryana, which is a state in India, have been conducted since 1967 to elect the members of state-level Haryana Legislative Assembly and national-level Lok Sabha. There are 90 assembly constituencies (17 reserved for SC) and 10 L ...

the area on either side of the GT Road from

, which has 28 legislative assembly constituencies where there is no dominance of one caste or community, is referred to as the ''"GT road belt of Haryana"''.Nu
BJP on a strong footing in northern districts
Hindustan Times, 30 March 2016.Haryana assembly elections: BJP counts on strategy
Times of India, 6 October 2019.

Gallery

File:Kos minar,tirawadi,karnal.JPG, Mughal era Kos Minar along GT road at

File:7518uttar pradesh09-ghaziabad09-grand trunk road09-1200.jpg, Grand Trunk Road in Uttarpradesh, India File:GTRoadBarkatha.jpg, GT Road near Barhi,

File:G.T road towards Burdwan from Hooghly 07.jpg, Grand Trunk Road towards Burdwan from Hooghly. File:University of Engineering and Technology on Grand Trunk Road in Lahore.jpg, GT Road in

. File:Gujranwala GT Road Overcast.jpg, GT road in Gujranwala,

. File:Jhelum River Bridge.JPG, GT Road above the

River Jhelum A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

. File:Original GT Road between Margalla and kala Chitta.JPG, Original GT Road passing through

Margalla Hills The Margalla Hills () are a hill range within the Margalla Hills National Park on the northern edge of Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan, just south of Haripur District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They are part of the Himalayan foothills. Th ...

to Kala Chitta Range,

. File:Nekka Margalla.JPG, Newly realigned GT Road passing by the westernmost point of

to Kala Chitta Range,

. File:Gridlock on the Kabul Jalalabad Highway (5300814706).jpg,

Kabul–Jalalabad Road The Kabul–Jalalabad Road, also known as National Highway 08 (NH08), is a highway running between the Afghan cities of Kabul (the national capital) and Jalalabad, the largest city in eastern Afghanistan and capital of Nangarhar Province. A p ...

, is westernmost stretch of the GT Road. File:Jalalabad Road 2.jpg, Mountain pass on the Kabul–Jalalabad Road,

Notes

References

External links

* Farooque, Abdul Khair Muhammad (1977), ''Roads and Communications in Mughal India.'' Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli. * Weller, Anthony (1997), ''Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road: Calcutta to Khyber''. Marlowe & Company. * Kipling, Rudyard (1901), ''

Kim Kim or KIM may refer to: Names * Kim (given name) * Kim (surname) ** Kim (Korean surname) *** Kim family (disambiguation), several dynasties **** Kim family (North Korea), the rulers of North Korea since Kim Il-sung in 1948 ** Kim, Vietnamese f ...

''. Considered one of Kipling's finest works, it is set mostly along the Grand Trunk Road. Free e-texts are available, for instanc
here
* * * *
National Highway Authority of India

National Highway Authority of Pakistan

NPR: Along the Grand Trunk Road
{{Coord, 27.337, N, 79.064, E, type:road_region:IN, display=title AH1 Roads in Asia Roads in Afghanistan Roads in Bangladesh Roads in India Roads in Pakistan Ancient roads and tracks Trade routes Maurya Empire Sur Empire British India History of transport in India History of transport in Pakistan Roads in Delhi Roads in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Roads in Punjab, India Roads in Punjab, Pakistan Roads in Uttar Pradesh Roads in West Bengal Rail transport in Howrah Transport in Kabul Transport in Lahore Historic trails and roads in India History of transport in Uttar Pradesh