8 PLUS REASONS WHY A DRIVE ON THE INDIA-THAILAND HIGHWAY SHOULD BE YOUR NEXT ROADTRIP!
From 2016 if you are travelling from Guwahati to Imphal and Moreh, via Dimapur, by road, you will actually be driving on the Asian Highway (AH-1), which is a part of the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway that will connect Moreh to Mae Sot in Thailand, via Mandalay and Yangon in Myanmar. The Myawaddy-Thinggan Nyenaung-Kawkareik section of the Asian highway linking India, Myanmar and Thailand has been put into service, which means that the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) road corridor is technically operational and you should soon be able to drive on it. If you did decide to take the roadtrip, it would take 14 days to cover the 4,500 km once-in-a-life drive.
#1 You can watch the setting sun over Guwahati. It looks a bit like this.
#2 You can have a stare off with some really angry clouds in Shillong
#3 You can visit a city from the 9th Century – Bagan, considered the starting point of the country of Mayanmar
#4 Road through Mandalay…
#5 You can see one of the massive pagodas in Naypyidaw, Mayanmar’s beautiful but hauntingly empty capital city.
#6 And then, Yangon (formerly Rangoon) where Bahadur Shah Zafar was kept in captivity by the British.
#7 Or just gaze out at Bang Pa In Royal Palace, Thailand before heading to Bangkok.
#8 Bangkok, Thailand – if your life hasn’t changed by the time you have arrived here, you’ve done something wrong.
Here’s a handy map of your forthcoming roadtrip
In the future, the AH-1 will start from Tokyo (connected by ferry) and run through Seoul, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom to Mae Sot, Yangon, Mandalay, Tamu, Moreh, Imphal, Kohima, Dimapur, Nagaon, Jorabat (Guwahati), Shillong, Dawki, Sylhet, Dhaka, Kolkata, Kanpur, New Delhi, Attari, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Kabul, Istanbul till the border of Bulgaria.
The northeastern part of the highway will be known as AH-2 if one is travelling from the Indonesian capital city of Denpasar to Jakarta, Singapore (connected by ferry), Bangkok, Mandalay, Tamu, Moreh, Imphal, Kohima, Dimapur, Nagaon, Jorabat (Guwahati), Shillong, Dawki, Sylhet, Dhaka, Siliguri, Kakarbhitta, Mahendranagar, New Delhi, Attari, Lahore, Quetta and Salafchegan (Tehran).