This week, I began my on-site work on the Grand Trunk Road. For this project, I will create a series of paintings along the overlap of the ancient Grant Trunk Road and modern Golden Quadrilateral Highway between Delhi and Kolkata. These images will represent the landscape now, as well as what remains from the past. The project will involve paintings done at regular intervals along the roadway. Narratives collected from locals and travelers will accompany the images to give a sense of how people experience this road in the present day.
Old iron bridge, Delhi side of the Yamuna River.
While National Highway 2 has become the defacto route southeast from Delhi, actually the GTR runs along NH 91 as it leaves the city. From the very start, it was obvious that this roadway has been in use for a long time. Here we can see the old iron bridge that crosses the Yamuna River. As my father-in-law observed, its like the George Washington Bridge because it has two levels, only instead of an upper & lower level for cars and buses, here the upper level is for trains, and the lower level is for cars, auto rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, pedestrians, motorbikes, cows, etc. The riverbed is currently being used as a rickshaw depot and on the other side, as a site for digging out mounds of sand to be used in construction throughout Delhi.
The road is in poor shape, with large potholes requiring slalom style driving.
At 76 km from Delhi. Here a temple seen on the right is being used as a police station and road block between Machkauli and Jalkhera.
At 152 km. A bridge crosses the river adjacent to a small marketplace in Nanau.
Your map is not correct. Where the road enters Pakistan it goes through Lahore then upwards passing through Rawalpindi By- passing Islamabad , touching Taxila to Peshawar and further into Afghanistan.
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