The Sarai

1 · POSITION

The sarai is the inn of the Indian road: a walled yard on a main road where a long-distance traveller found a bed and room for his animals. At their peak the Mughals are said to have built between 1,700 and 3,000 of them along several thousand kilometres of road; fewer than a hundred survive, most in poor condition. The register holds the type as the public lodging of the subcontinent, set in a network of wells, trees, kos minars and stepwells. [1, 2]

2 · ON THE GREAT ROAD

The road they lined was the Sadak-e-Azam, the Great Road developed under Sher Shah Suri from Peshawar through Lahore, Delhi and Agra towards Bengal — the line of the later Grand Trunk Road. Sarais stood on the main roads because travellers going far needed both a room and a place for their beasts; Delhi still holds the names of several, among them Arab ki Sarai beside Humayun’s tomb and Sarai Kale Khan on the southern approach. [2]

3 · ONE SARAI, READ CLOSELY

A sarai built in 1720 at Okhla by Dona Juliana Dias da Costa, a Portuguese woman at the Mughal court, shows the plan. Its likely remains suggest at least fifteen rooms, separate quarters for animals and separate kitchens for vegetarian and non-vegetarian travellers, with a circular well that still holds water — built, it is recorded, as a rest house for European travellers. [2]

4 · A PUBLIC BUILDING

Recent scholarship reads the sarai as a secular, public prototype: a building for anyone on the road, not a palace or a shrine. The register keeps two surviving examples under codes of their own — Nur Mahal Serai and Arab Sarai — and the road that carried them as the Grand Trunk Road. [1]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ Checked on 22 October 2026. A well, a mosque, rooms and a resident baker are confirmed for the Mughal sarais, with fodder, water and bedsteads free. A bath and a toll paid to sleep inside the walls were not found, and the note no longer carries them; the nanbai is a baker, not a cook. The figure of 1,700 to 3,000 sarais is a scholar’s estimate. [1–4]