Sher Shah Suri and the Mughals built serais roughly a day's march apart along the imperial roads. In Indian Punjab the survivors include Doraha, Dakhni Sarai, the Phillaur serai, Nurmahal, Fatehabad and Sarai Amanat Khan.
Sarai Amanat Khan in Tarn Taran district is the finest of them. It was built in the 1640s by Amanat Khan, the calligrapher who wrote the inscriptions on the Taj Mahal, and it carries tilework and calligraphy by him. It is in poor condition.
Nurmahal serai in Jalandhar district, attributed to Nur Jahan, has a carved stone gateway of a quality unusual in a functional building.
They are protected monuments and most are unstaffed, unlit and unvisited. Several have families living in the cells.
Sher Shah Suri is said to have built about 1,700 sarais on his roads in the 1540s, and the Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi puts them two kos apart, which is roughly six to eight kilometres. His main road ran from Sonargaon in Bengal to the Indus. There is nothing comparable on that road now.
A serai was free. The Mughal establishment ran them on endowment, with a bhatiyara to cook, a well, fodder and a guard on the gate, and the traveller paid nothing at all. That is the part with no modern equivalent and it is the part left out whenever these buildings are described as architecture.
A serai is a walled square with a gateway at each end, cells around the inside, a well and a mosque. The plan is the same everywhere and it was built to a standard.
Their loss has been by use rather than by demolition. A serai with a school in it, a police post, or fifteen families living in the cells, is not restored and is not empty either.