Author

Salman Rashid is Pakistan s pre-eminent travel writer Grand Trunk Road and a Fellow of Royal Geographical Society. In his books, the traveller, the story-teller and the historian swap hats at astonishing speed, blending geography, history, ethnography, and indigenous oral and historical traditions. Rashid has been travelling and writing for almost four decades and has contributed to numerous prestigious publications, including hundreds of feature articles to leading English language newspapers of Pakistan.
Rashid s books, among the classics of travel, include Deosai: Land of the Giant, The Apricot Road to Yarkand and Prisoner on a Bus. He has also written A Time of Madness, a memoir of the partition of India. From Landi Kotal to Wagah is his eleventh book and the culmination of decades of travelling and exploring along the Grand Trunk Road.

Summary:
This is the story of one of the grandest highroads in the subcontinent richly steeped in legend and history. From the rugged contours of the Khyber Pass it bears the reader through a wondrous land of culture, heritage and a remarkably beautiful geography. From the middle of the sixth century BCE when Cyrus, the greatest king of the Achaemenian empire, annexed modern day Pakistan right down to the present times, the road has been extensively travelled. If there were invaders and plunderers on this grand highway, there were also pious pilgrims and common traders. Sprinkled along the length of the road like milestones to an ancient past are signs of those who traversed it. The Greeks, Mauryans, Scythians, Parthians, Sassanians and Turks all left their mark with a distinctive Mughal and British overlay. This book is a celebration of the Grand Trunk Road and those who left their mark on the history of Pakistan.