An Indian man has constructed a five mile stretch of road with a pick axe and crowbar so his children, who live away from home for school, can come to visit him more often.
Jalandhar Nayak, 45, lives in a remote village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa about six miles from the residential school where his three sons study.
The boys’ route home, however, takes them three hours because they have to trek across five hills.
Jalandhar Nayak used only a pick axe and a crow bar to build the road for his children to visit him
For the last two years, he set out every morning with his tools and would spend up to eight hours of the day cutting rocks and removing boulders.
In recognition of his feat, local officials said they will complete the remaining part of road, which he said made him ‘extremely happy’, the BBC reported.
He will also be paid for the work he has already completed on the road, which is of high enough quality for cars to use it.
Once the road is finished, it will connect Mr Nayak’s village to the town where the school is located.
Vegetable seller Mr Nayak, who himself has never been to school, told local media he hoped his sons would be able to come home more often on weekends or holidays once the road is completed.
The 45-year-old, who works as a vegetable seller, ensured that no tree was cut down while making his road
‘My children find it difficult to walk on the narrow and stony path while going to their school,’ he told Kalinga TV.
‘I often saw them stumbling against the stones and I decided to carve a road through the mountain so that they can walk freely.’
Mr Nayak has also asked the local government to provide his village electricity and drinking water.
He said he had neither sought nor received any help from local officials, who only found out about what he was doing when he was featured in a local news bulletin earlier this month.
‘I was impressed to find that he took great care to ensure that not a single tree was cut while building the road,’ Sibashakti Biswal, a local reporter who first interviewed Mr Nayak, said.
Mr Nayak has been compared to Dashrath Manjhi, who spent 22 years chiselling a massive gap in a mountain out of love for his dead wife.
The impoverished labourer from India’s lowest caste, embarked on the monumental endeavour after his wife Falguni died in 1959 because she had not been able to receive urgent medical care after an accident.