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"Look! Brahmins 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is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.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."-Rudyard Kipling
from the novel Kim, 1901.
The Grand Trunk Road (commonly known as the ?GT Road?) is South Asia?s
longest and most historical road. Stretching from the Khyber pass all
the way Eastwards to Calcutta, the GT road played a key historic role
in economically and socially integrating the undivided India. It was militarily
very strategic, and has often been used the route to conquering the sub-continent.
In fact, the GT Road was the route Alexander took in his conquest of South
Asia!
Starting from the Khyber Pass and Peshawar in Pakistan, the GT Road passes
through Rawalpindi and Lahore to Amritsar (In India) and Delhi to Calcutta.
It was initially the project of Sher Shah Suri, who ruled much of Northern
India during the 15th century. His aim was to integrate the remote provinces
of his empire for adminintrative and military reasons. Further expansion
and development of the GT Road was undertaken under the Mughal Regime,
and the British colonization.
Today, four centuries later; the Grand Trunk road continues to be a major
transport and trade artery for both Pakistan and India

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