Ben Arnoldy - Correspondent

The boundary between Central Asia and South Asia is a matter of opinion, but in my mind I crossed over it just on the outskirts of the Afghan city of Jalalabad. That was where I eyed the first autorikshaw, or as I like to think of them, weed-whackers on wheels.

Whizzing and tooting, the little yellow mopeds dart in, out, and through traffic across India and Pakistan, but generally not Afghanistan. It may have to do with the harsh Central Asian landscape. Or, for the burly Afghans, it may simply be impossible to preserve personal dignity riding on one.

From Jalalabad I was heading east for the Khyber Pass and a ride along the Grand Trunk Road, one of the most storied thoroughfares in the world.

In 1901, Rudyard Kipling depicted the Grand Trunk as the great unifier of British India. “It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles - such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.”

His vision would last less than half a century before the road was spliced by the partition of India and the birth of Pakistan. Now, we have two “grand truncated roads.”

You can learn a few things about a place even from behind the window of a car, and that was especially true with the Pakistani portion of the G.T. – or “jittee” in the local accent.

Sometimes signs told whole stories. For example, not far from Peshawar I passed the “Decent Public High School.” The thoroughly modern gas stations advertise “24-hour mosque” beneath mentions of a convenience store and full-service.

But it’s the military that dominates the landscape. Just to travel through the Khyber Pass – a gradual
mountain route historically used by conquerors, smugglers, and thieves -- foreigners must accept a soldier for protection. Actually, three of them. Different tribal forces have different jurisdictions,
meaning we twice had to drop one guy off and pick up another.

Many of the nicest buildings along the G.T. belong to the military. In Peshawar alone, I spotted the School of Mechanized Warfare, the Artillery School, and the Frontier Corps Headquarters. Stickers on cars tout the Pakistani Army, and F-16 fighter jets are a common decal on the brightly painted trucks.

Miniature Ghauri and Shaheen missiles – Pakistan’s delivery vehicles for any attack on India – were proudly displayed in a roundabout near the town of Gujrat. “Power,” my driver said, pointing at them. I asked him how he felt about Pakistan getting the nuclear bomb. “We need food,” he said, making a butter-not-guns argument.

Pakistan’s portion of the G.T. no longer seems to be the melting pot of cultures that it was during Kipling’s day. A few reminders of a wider heritage remain: a handful of churches left by the British, a small Hindu temple at the confluences of rivers.

At a roadside restaurant between Islamabad and Lahore, I drew a few stares. One man asked my driver where I was from, and he responded, “Englistan. London.” The depressing reality in many parts of the world is that it has become dangerous to admit you are from the United States. I later told the driver, “Good you did not say – ”

“I never do,” he said, explaining how yesterday he had introduced my American colleague as a Bosnian.

Though the road has become a reasonably modern two-lane separated highway, there’s still a little of the old sense that people from all walks of life make their way together. Especially in the agricultural areas of the Punjab, where grain is piled into pyramids three stories high, horse-drawn carts loaded with bricks or cow manure jostle with autorikshaws and trucks with curtains of jingling chains along their undersides.

In a few years, the “jittee” may stop being the main East-West route. A new three-lane, limited-access toll road stretches from Lahore to just short of Peshawar. Complete with nighttime reflectors on the pavement and moralizing signs like “observe lane discipline” and “frequently use vehicle mirrors,” it feels like any US interstate highway.

Many locals still prefer to take the G.T. The tolls are one reason: “Money is important. Time is not so important,” my driver explained. But he also said there is a sense of unease about the road’s isolation and tedium. “I don’t go at night because it’s empty and boring. You can fall asleep.”