Truck Stop India

Truck Stop India is the first book to document India’s truck stop culture. The photographs highlight the roadside eateries known as dhabas (from the Hindi word “dabba,” meaning lunchbox), which are beloved among truckers, traders, and tourists, but about which foreigners know little. Dhabas are one of modern India’s most ubiquitous social institutions, hidden in plain sight.

David Zurick’s award-winning photographs spotlight the grit, grime, glitter, and incidental beauty of highway life in modern India. Truckers and trucks, tourists, gaudily lit properties and others blanketed in fog, make an appearance in the book, as do dhaba cooks, waiters, and patrons. For locals, the book reawakens them to one of their unsung cultural treasures, while foreigners will discover in it an aspect of India they never knew existed. The book concludes with a set of dhaba recipes collected by the author during his travels. These provide instructions about how to prepare Indian food with a unique truck stop twist.