Chronicle No. 10 · History

Every Two Kos, a Bed and a Meal: Sher Shah Suri's Highway of Sarais

He ruled for barely five years and spent them building a road that fed every traveller on it, free of charge.

Sher Shah Suri ruled northern India for barely five years, from 1540 to 1545. He spent a great deal of that time building a road.

The highway he rebuilt and extended — later known as the Grand Trunk Road — ran from Bengal in the east towards Afghanistan in the west. Trees were planted along both sides to shade the traveller. Wells were dug, especially on the drier western stretches. And at intervals along it he raised sarais: walled courtyard inns with rooms, stables, water and a market at the gate.

The chronicler Abbas Khan Sarwani, writing later under Akbar in the Tarikh-i Sher Shahi, recorded the details that still startle:

• sarais placed roughly every two kos along the route
• as many as 1,700 built across the empire
• food provided to those who stopped, without charge
• separate arrangements for Hindu and Muslim travellers, so that nobody had to compromise their practice in order to eat

Each sarai also carried the imperial post. Relays of horsemen changed mounts at these gates, which made the inns the fastest news in India as well as the safest beds. Many grew outward into market towns, and a surprising number of places along the modern road still carry "Sarai" in their name.

Few of Sher Shah's own sarais survive intact. What survived was the idea, repeated by the Mughals after him in buildings like the sarai at Nurmahal in Punjab: a road is not finished until someone has decided where the traveller will sleep.

It is a strikingly modern piece of thinking. Infrastructure was treated as hospitality, and hospitality as infrastructure. The state did not merely permit travel. It fed it.

Lesson: Access is only half of hospitality; the other half is anticipating what a guest will need before they think to ask.