Payal, Doraha and Samrala are the towns of eastern Ludhiana district along and around the Grand Trunk Road.
Doraha has the best preserved Mughal serai in Indian Punjab, with a carved gateway, standing beside the modern highway.
Payal is an old town with a fort site and is the tehsil headquarters for the Jarg belt with its clay horse shrine.
Samrala is the tehsil that contains Machhiwara, where Guru Gobind Singh Ji was sheltered after Chamkaur, and near which Saadat Hasan Manto was born in 1912.
Sarabha, the village of Kartar Singh Sarabha Ji, is in the same tehsil.
One tehsil of Ludhiana district holds a Mughal serai, the shelter of the tenth Guru, the birthplace of the greatest Urdu short story writer and the village of a nineteen-year-old hanged for the Ghadar rising, and there is no route that connects them.
The Doraha serai has two gateways with carved brick and a large courtyard, and it has been used as a location for film shoots, which is how most people have seen it.
Machhiwara is where Guru Gobind Singh Ji, separated from everyone, was sheltered and carried out disguised in a litter. Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan, two brothers of the town, arranged it.
Sarabha is an ordinary village with a memorial and a school named for Kartar Singh Sarabha Ji, who was hanged at nineteen in 1915.