He took a hammer and chisel to a mountain, and kept going for 22 years.

Dashrath Manjhi, a daily wage labourer from Gehlaur village near Gaya in Bihar, carved a road through a rocky hill by hand after his wife died without getting timely medical treatment.

Manjhi was born in 1934 in Gehlaur, a village separated from nearby towns by a rocky ridge. Residents had to travel long distances around the hill for medical care, markets and work, with routes stretching about 55 to 70 kilometres.

In 1959, his wife, Falguni Devi, was seriously injured while crossing the terrain near the hill. With no proper road linking the village to medical facilities, help arrived too late. She died without timely treatment.

Around 1960, Manjhi began cutting into the mountain with only a hammer and chisel. He had no machines, engineers or funding.

Many villagers initially laughed at him and thought he had lost his sanity, but he kept working from sunrise to sunset. He also worked as a manual labourer for low wages and used his earnings to buy tools. When that was not enough, he sold his goats to afford better equipment.

The work was slow and physically exhausting. Over 22 years, from 1960 to 1982, he kept chipping away at the rock.

By the time he finished, Manjhi had carved a road about 110 metres long, 9 metres wide and up to 7 to 8 metres deep in places, entirely by hand.

The road sharply reduced the distance between the Atri and Wazirganj areas of Gaya district. For villagers, it opened access to hospitals, schools and markets.

For years, his work drew little attention outside the village. Later, journalists and local officials highlighted what he had done, and he became known as the “Mountain Man”.

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