ANCIENT FORMS OF TRAVEL still compete with modern trucks and buses on the road

PHOTOGRAPHER TIM SMITH and oral historian Irna Qureshi have created the exhibition The Grand Trunk Road especially for the People's History Museum in Manchester, UK. It explores this famous highway and aims to look at the history of the road through photographs taken in Spring 2006 along the route from Delhi to the Afghan border in northwest Pakistan. The route has a great resonance for a large number of people from the sub-continent who have made their homes in Britain. Tim and Irna sought out people with links to Britain, photographing and interviewing them and their families. The result is a photographic exhibition personalised by memories, opinions and feelings of the individuals they interviewed. The Grand Trunk Road (abbreviated to GT Road in common usage) is one of South Asia's oldest and longest major roads. For several centuries, it has linked the eastern and western regions of the Indian subcontinent, passing right across the populous cities of Pakistan and India. Today, the Grand Trunk Road remains a continuum that spans a distance of over 2,500 km and traverses three south Asian countries: Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. It starts in Peshawar in Pakistan and passes through Islamabad and Lahore before entering India at Wagah. Within India, it passes through Amritsar, Ambala, Delhi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Kolkata and then enters Bangladesh to finally end its journey at Sonargaon in Narayanganj district.

source: http://www.asianartnewspaper.com