The Road to Wagah... driving to the Pakistan border

[Sangeeta G Kamat]

Its intere4sting... maybe we can use it.

Biju

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 15:41:16 -0600
From: Nalini Lamba Nieves <nlam...@students.wisc.edu>
Subject: The Road to Wagah... driving to the Pakistan border

long but good. n
>
> Rediff On The Net
>
> The Road to Wagah
> ...driving to the Pakistan border
>
> By Veeresh Malik
>
> About 455 kms.
>
> That's the figure put down by various guide books for the distance
> between New Delhi and the Indo-Pak border at Wagah-Attari.
>
> I do this route very often, when I need to do high speed drive checks
> on new cars... Somehow we always end up doing over 1,000 kilometres
>on
> the return trip.
>
> The road to Pakistan, truly, is longer than one would think it was!
>
> Ideally, we leave our home, in south Delhi, before daybreak and make
> it to the border in anything between seven and 10 hours, each way,
> depending on the vehicle, traffic and number of stoppages. Once we
> have done it in about six hours, and that was when we did the return
> leg early in the morning of August 15, 1997, with the highway
> absolutely empty.
>
> That was probably not the case, even for the prime minister of India,
> on what is one of India's busiest highways, though the security
> boffins surely gave it a try in the name of sanitising the route.
> Luckily for them, and the rest of us, the prime minister boarded his
> bus on February 20 from Amritsar, and then pelted straight along the
> last 30 odd kilometres to the border.
>
> Lucky, because for the rest of us, the Delhi-Indo-Pak border route
> actually bypasses Amritsar.
>
> Leaving Delhi, by Ring road and then Outer Ring road, you join up
>with
> National Highway 1, heading north out of the city. You will battle
> endless trucks as you exit Delhi at the Singhu border. You can get
> stuck, especially at night, for hours while the commercial traffic
> sorts out its own bedlam. Moving roughly more north than northwest,
> straight as an arrow, you will travel on a World Bank funded highway
> lined by eucalyptus on either side and bougainvillaea in the middle.
> Crossing tractors and trucks carrying farm produce, driving in the
> opposite direction on the wrong side of the road, while you touch
> whatever maximum speed your car can achieve, is an experience so
> Indian. I have seen foreign test drivers commit that cardinal sin --
> they shut their eyes luckily while sitting in the passenger seat.
>
> You will whistle past Sonepat shoes available at factory prices
> Panipat pickles Karnal rice Kurukshetra battlefields from the
> Mahabharat on the left Murthal nothing much but rundown dhabas and
>you
> can be at Shahabad Markanda in just about two hours.
>
> Now Shahbad Markanda is an excellent stopping place with its Prince
> Motel on the right side (coming from New Delhi) a little way out of
> the town. Here you get clean toilets, 24 hours service, cleaning
> service for your bug-spotted windscreen and, best of all, an
>amazingly
> filling breakfast of omelettes to order, mooli or aloo (white radish
> or potato) parathas, served with chunks of white butter and a
> vegetable pickle, that is a side dish in its own right.
>
> Outside this town is a Sufi-Muslim place of worship, much trusted by
> people who use this highway, called Nau Gaz Peer or the nine metre
> saint. Legend has it that this patron saint of long distance drivers
> was nine metres long. Length, not height. Right next to it is a
> temple. The two houses of worship share a common kitchen. Makes you
> wonder what you and I are fighting about, as you stand in line with
> burly Sikh and thick-set Tamil Christian truck drivers, amongst
> others, to listen to the music being played by a group of resident
> religious singers of an indeterminate sect.
>
> Suitably fortified, you reach the cantonment city of Ambala, and
>drive
> past miles of army trucks and railway wagons. If you're lucky you'll
> spot Jaguars and MIGs out from the various nearby air-bases on early
> morning low-level exercises. Sometimes you can even see them playing
> at dogfights, which is even more amazing a sight at night, with
>lights
> and dummy tracer providing an unmatched fireworks display.
>
> This is where the highway branches off, at a very oddly constructed
> split-level roundabout with a crazy set of traffic signals, which
>I've
> never seen anybody follow. The left turn takes you northwest towards
> the Indo-Pak border on NH1. While the road going straight now heads
> north towards Chandigarh and then northeast towards Shimla and other
> points Himachali.
>
> Ambala is also famous for 'mixies'. Chances are you can do without
> them at this juncture. It was also famous for a dhaba, which served a
> great chicken. But it is now infested with flies, stray dogs and
> unrelated drunk 'puppies' and is best avoided. You could zoom through
> this has-been of a city-town-village till you come to a crashing halt
> at Rajpura, the Haryana-Punjab border.
>
> Experience has shown me that driving a car with a distant state
> registration plate gets you through faster than if you are driving
>one
> with Delhi/ Haryana/ Punjab plates.
>
> The reason? I think the cops figure you to be a returning NRI type if
> you have a neighbouring state number-plate. A distant state
> number-plate signifies armed forces.
>
> I always, but always, wear my old merchant navy beret and carry a
> crisply ironed set of my old uniform hanging from the rear hand-grip.
> It wouldn't fit half of me now, but it always works. I even get
> saluted sometimes as they whistle me through the express lane
>reserved
> for nincompoops and other VVIPs.
>
> At Rajpura, if you need quick succour and rest-rooms, make for the
> Eagle Motel-Inn, again on the right side, but bang in the middle of
> town. For some reason, we have never understood, our children always
> order noodles here that taste like the food my grandmother used to
> serve. They are fried/cooked in butter like everything else. Honest,
> you can even get Coke with butter floating in it if you want it.
> You're a bit more than halfway there at this stage, and if you're
> doing well, you've been on the roads for about three or three and a
> half hours now.
>
> Make tracks and soon you are passing the quaintly named town of
> Dhandari Kalan. This is an (inland) port city with more container
> traffic than Calcutta and Vizag put together, on the outskirts of
> Ludhiana. Legend has it that after Partition the uprooted
> industrialists at Ludhiana told Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that
> international trade would be difficult as Karachi was no longer
> available to them and Bombay was too far away.
>
> Nehru apparently told them that if he knew them well, they would
>bring
> the port to Ludhiana. There is not a single shipping line that
>touches
> India that is not represented here. You see their offices all along
> the road and you expect to see a sea-front any moment. As a Punjabi
> and as a seafarer, this is my high spot on the route. But don't stop
> to smell the salt air.
>
> While the highway between Ludhiana and Jalandhar is probably the
> fastest and best laid out in the country, the traffic jams as you
> cross Ludhiana (woollens and hosiery) -- or the smaller towns of
> Sirhind (a floating restaurant), Khanna (wheat in bulk), Mandi
> Gobindgarh (steel) or Phagwara (alcohol) -- bring down average
>speeds.
> Turn right before you enter Jalandhar, and there is always another
> traffic jam right outside the Police Academy.
>
> Jalandhar is a city dedicated to war heroes and emigrants. Statues
>vie
> with airline agents. The great Punjabi diaspora has its roots in this
> region. But all you are interested in at this point is going straight
> on the road towards Amritsar.
>
> The traffic on the highways suddenly changes flavour, and you begin
>to
> see a large number of jugaads competing with you. Home-constructed
> jugaads are goods carriers (which also carry people) , usually
> unregistered, made out of steel bed frames, V-belts attached to
> pump-set engines and crude tiller-steering systems. Luckily the road
> is still very broad and you keep going.
>
> If you leave the clean town of Beas behind you and at a point where
> the signboard reads 'Amritsar 36 kilometres,' you will also notice a
> sign that says 'Lahore 62 km' and points vaguely to the right. Theory
> has it that the wise traders of Amritsar don't like 'easy pickings'
> driving straight towards the border. You can save almost 30
>kilometres
> and a lot of city traffic by taking this route.
>
> Which also takes you through some very interesting history as far as
> Indo-Pak conflicts are concerned. Tarn Tarn is just one of the epic
> battlefields en-route. Stop to talk to elderly farmers about the 1971
> war and you realise how open the terrain really is. There is plenty
>of
> riverine land, criss-crossed by canals and roads which still have
> complementary ones on the other side. One day I may well hire a local
> guide to see if I can actually drive trucks full of contraband over
>as
> is rumoured and claimed.
>
> The nomenclature on the highway gets confusing here. Locals claim
>that
> in the old days they would continue right through in the same
> northwester-ly direction all the way to Kabul. But that's a tall
>story
> to swallow. There's a lot of difficult terrain in between.
>
> The local transport here again changes to pre-war (pre-World War II)
> Dodge and Fargo semi-trucks with very Pakistani style, high-front
> bodies built on them; another indication that cultures span political
> borders with consummate ease. The highway gets even better here,
>lined
> on both sides by armed forces encampments and fields, which seem to
>be
> lush throughout the year.
>
> Arrive at Wagah-Attari border and we always manage to set up friends
> or relatives in the armed forces or BSF to give us place and time for
> a bit of rest and clean up. If you are able to rustle up such an
> acquaintance, then you have a chance to witness the most amazing
> border ceremony this side of Suez, everyday at sunset. Grab a quick
> bite at the divine BSF mess right on the border. And dont forget to
> wave at the Pakistani Rangers who surprise, surprise -- wave back. It
> should not really be a matter of astonishment because basically they
> are the same as us. Once one of them even threw a chocolate across
>for
> our then 11-year-old son to shouts of "Tendulkar-Tendulkar!" when he
> actually caught it in the dark, cleanly.
>
> Then it is time for the long night haul back to Delhi, stopping over
> at the Golden Temple to praise the lord for everything.
>
> Great route. Pity the prime minister and those on the road with him
> did not see most of it! They joined the road at one of the various
> army camps just short of the border on any one of the many slip-roads
> and made it to the border in time for the evening news!
>
> *******************************************************************
>