Novelist and travel writer Anthony Weller takes readers on a 1,500-mile journey along an ancient trading road through India and PakistanFor more than 30 centuries, travelers have walked, ridden, prayed, fought, and died along the Grand Trunk. Its 1,500 miles straddle the vast cultures, landscapes, and politics of India and Pakistan, from Calcutta all the way to the Khyber Pass.Anthony Weller's remarkable book traces the story of this ancient route from its origins as a path through woods, fields, and jungles to the horsecart road immortalized in Rudyard Kipling's Kim. He captures the road's Just, heat, villages, and temples as well as tales of its wayfarers, from Buddha in his moment of enlightenment to the Sikhs in their present unrest. Great religions were born on it; empires and invaders have struggled to control it; and merchants have staked their lives on it. Today, it remains the economic lifeline of one-quarter of the world's people.Weller gives us both the road's dramatic history and a modern portrait of the Asian subcontinent. He meets the people whose ancestors lived and died along the Grand Trunk as well as the truckers who rule today and brings alive the only man-made artery that still links India and Pakistan.