This column started in my head when to my surprise, a few Sundays ago I reached Vrindavan from my home in East Delhi door-to-door in two hours flat. This was astonishing. I had grown up with my mother making not infrequent trips to Vrindavan and the task of reaching deep into Uttar Pradesh from Delhi always seemed arduous and taxing. Things of course have changed because of a relatively new expressway that allows one to zip in and zip out, even with evening traffic. Our journey home the same Sunday in the evening took only two-and-a-half hours. This expressway, and others like it snaking up and down the country, have brought places like Agra (from Delhi) within two hours of drive time and Meerut within the hour. A friend of mine in Dehradun is doing a countdown to the day, not far, when her drive time from the hills to Delhi would be halved to around four hours. India is now building highways at the pace of around 30 kilometres a day a record and aims to spend around one lakh crore rupees building highways in the next three years.