Pathankot sits where Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu meet. Everything going north by road or rail goes through it, which is why it holds one of the largest military stations in the country and why the 1947 award of Gurdaspur district mattered so much.
The Kangra Valley Railway, two feet six inches gauge, runs from Pathankot to Joginder Nagar, built between 1926 and 1929 to serve the Uhl river hydro scheme. It is 164 kilometres of narrow gauge through the foothills and it still runs.
The Madhopur headworks on the Ravi, which feed the Upper Bari Doab canal cut in the 1850s, are twelve kilometres away. The Ranjit Sagar dam on the same river is upstream.
The Nurpur fort, in the hills behind the town, was the seat of the Pathania rajas and holds a Krishna temple with black stone carving inside the ruined walls.
The town's name is from the Pathania Rajputs, not from Pathans.
Everything moving from India into Jammu and Kashmir by land, and much of what moves into Himachal, passes through this corner. The railhead, the highway junction and the airbase all follow from it.
The award of Gurdaspur district in 1947 is what created the corner. Without it there would have been no land link between India and Kashmir at all.
The town is small, its economy is the traffic and the cantonment, and the country around it is broken Kandi with poor land.