Hyper nationalism outside, desolate inside: A guide to the Wagah-Attari border crossing

It does not require courage to make it over from Attari to Wagah on the India-Pakistan frontier but it does help to have the right nationality. Being from Nepal, I was able to make the crossing with the ease unavailable to either Indians or Pakistanis, travelling through the 55 km stretch from Amritsar to Lahore all in one morning.

This was not an entirely new experience. Back in 1977, while studying law at Delhi University, I utilised a vacation to travel overland to Kabul and Bamiyan via Torkham, on what was then the Hippie Trail. The route took me into Afghanistan over Khyber Pass, a passage whose name alone used to tantalise people of the entire subcontinent not so long ago.

Using the advice to say “Buddhist” when asked my religion by Pakistani immigration officers at Wagah, I travelled the bumpy western Punjab roads, crossing the Jhelum and up the Potohar Plateau. This was long before Pakistan built Southasia’s first superhighway, the Lahore-Islamabad M-2.

Then again in 2011, my wife, son and I drove our Volkswagen Beetle from Kathmandu to Peshawar along the Grand Trunk Road, in a fund-raising campaign for spinal injury rehabilitation. The drive was an opportunity to remember Sher Shah Suri, from Lucknow...

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