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Grand Trunk Road
Unless otherwise indicated, pictures on this page © Marco Prins and Jona Lendering. Photos can be downloaded and used for non-commercial purposes, but you have to acknowledge Livius.
The old pavement of the Grand Trunk Road near Taxila. Photo Marco Prins. The Grand Trunk Road is as old as the hills. In Antiquity, it was known as Uttarâpatha, 'the upper road', and it connected the cities of the Ganges plain (e.g., Patna), with the towns in the eastern Punjab (Amritsar, Lahore), and Taxila in the western Punjab. After crossing the Indus near Hund and passing along Shahbazgarhi (where king Ashoka left his famous rock edicts), Peucelaotis, and Peshawar, it reached the river Kabul, crossed the Khyber pass and touched the heart of Afghanistan. Here, one could reach the Silk road. During the reign of the Maurya emperos, Buddhism traveled to the west to Gandara,along the Uttarâpatha. In the sixteenth century, the Mughal emperors paved the road.
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The countryside along the Grand Trunk Road. Photo Jona Lendering. Today, the Grand Trunk Road is a fascinating highway, used by cars, camels, and cattle - "touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun al-Raschid", to borrow a phrase from Rudyard Kipling. Traveling from Rawalpindi or Islamabad to Lahore, you're part of one of the greatest tales of history.
The countryside along the Grand Trunk Road. Photo Marco Prins. One of the travelers was Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king who conquered the Punjab in 326, and proceeded along the Grand Trunk Road to the river Hydaspes or Jhelum, where he fought against a raja named Porus. Alexander won this battle because he was able to cross the river, something Porus believed was impossible in the monsoon season.
The countryside along the Grand Trunk Road. Photo Marco Prins. He did not know that Alexander had ordered one of his officers, Coenus, to transport the ships he had once used to cross the Indus, all the way to the Hydaspes. When you travel along the Grand Trunk Road and see the hills and ravines, you can not help but feel admiration for the soldiers who carried the ships for 200 kilometers through this country.

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