Some 120km ahead of us lies the village -- Katra Sadatganj -- where two schoolgirls were attacked when they went out into the fields to relieve themselves Tuesday night; the pair were gang raped and later found hanged in a mango tree.
The brutal assault has brought a range of challenges facing India into the international spotlight, almost 67 years after the country gained its independence from British rule.
At Katra Sadatganj, villagers mourning the two girls blame a cocktail of issues for the horrific rape attack, from a lack of decent sanitation, to underdevelopment, to what they call police "slackness" in response to the girls' disappearance.