Why it looks like this

The Grand Trunk Road — the ancient route linking Kabul, Lahore, Delhi and Bengal — runs straight through Gujranwala, and the city is essentially a swelling along it: bazaars and mohallas packed near the road and the railway that later paralleled it.

The city has one famous son above all: Maharaja Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire, was born here in 1780. Today Gujranwala is one of Pakistan's main industrial cities, its workshops and factories strung along the same old corridor.