Question

What is the total length of the Grand Trunk Road?
A.2500 km
B.2800 km
C.500 km
D.1000 km

Answer 1

Hint: Grand Trunk road is one of Asia’s longest and oldest roads that was first built by the Mauryan emperors Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka and then rebuilt several times by Sher Shah Suri, the Mughals and the British. The modern version of the road is based on the work done by the British between 1833 to 1860. It functioned as one of the famous trade routes in the continent joining the middle-east to the Indian subcontinent.

Complete answer:
Option A: is incorrect.
Option B: is correct. 2800 km is the approximate distance covered by the Grand Trunk Road as it runs across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The road passes through various major cities including— Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan; Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Lahore in Pakistan; Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ambala, Kurukshetra, Karnal, Panipat, Sonipat, Delhi, Aligarh, Mathura, Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Durgapur and Kolkata in India; Rajshahi, Dhaka, Narayanganj, Camilla, Feni, Chittagong and Cox Bazar in Bangladesh.

So, the correct answer is option B.

Note: The mention of the Grand Trunk Road can be found as early as in the epic of Mahabharata where it is called the Uttarpatha. Currently, the road coincides with the Asian Highway 1 which runs from Tokyo, Japan to Istanbul, Turkey through South Korea, North Korea, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The road also coincides with several major national highways in India like NH 3 from Jalandhar to Leh, NH 44 from Agra to Jalandhar, NH 19 from Kolkata to Agra, NH 27 and NH 12.