Passage through India

Cruising along the Grand Trunk Road's Indian leg, a 2,100-km stretch from Calcutta in the East to Punjab-Pakistan border in the North-west, is like being on a time machine, as images of India - its mythical past and forgotten antiquities and also that of the post-reforms glitter, kitsch and deprivation - flash past, sometimes all at once.

Commissioned by Afghan Emperor Sher Shah Suri during his short reign of northern India between 1540 and 1545, the GT Road seems to go on, despite its often dire state, forking out from and joining up with national highways, playing hide-and-seek with the main thoroughfare, going under the sand at Dehri-on-Sone and reappearing again at Sasaram, where its chief patron lies, buried underneath a majestic structure of symmetry, rising from a huge, placid tank.