Fatehgarh Churian, Dera Baba Nanak, Qadian, Batala, Sri Hargobindpur and Kalanaur are the towns of the upper Bari Doab in Gurdaspur district, strung along the country between the Beas and the Ravi.
Fatehgarh Churian takes its name from the churiwalas, the bangle makers, and it was a manufacturing place for glass and lac bangles before it was anything else. The trade has largely gone and the name has outlived it, which is the ordinary end of a name attached to a craft.
Fatehgarh Churian itself is a market town with a Mughal-period core and a sugar and grain economy.
The belt is dense with history and thin on visitors, which is true of most of Punjab away from Amritsar and Anandpur.
It is also a border belt, ten to thirty kilometres from Pakistan along most of its length, with the economic consequences that carries.
Qadian is the birthplace of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and the origin point of the Ahmadiyya movement, whose headquarters moved to Rabwah in Pakistan after 1947. The complex at Qadian remains and receives visitors from around the world.
Batala is the largest of the towns and was a foundry centre making agricultural machinery and castings, an industry that has largely gone. It also holds the site associated with the marriage of Guru Nanak Sahib Ji.
Kalanaur's platform, where Akbar was proclaimed emperor in 1556 at the age of thirteen, stands in a field outside the town inside a small enclosure, with almost no visitors and no interpretation.