Inside Akal Travel Center, a 24-hour truck stop on Wyoming’s high plains, the smells of sizzling garlic and earthy curry powder permeate the air. It’s a gray, windy day in late January, and Ediquis Brown has parked his rig at the fuel station off Interstate 80, about 20 miles from downtown Laramie, Wyoming. He walks past aisles stocked with candy bars and kitschy souvenirs to the checkout counter, where he orders without even looking at the faded whiteboard menu. His go-to: tandoori chicken, garlic naan, one mango lassi, and two cups of creamy chai.
Based out of Fort Lauderdale, Brown travels east to west every week in his 18-wheeler, often driving up to 11-hour shifts and eating in his vehicle to stay on schedule. He is one of the dozens of motorists who come to Akal each day for house-made batches of beautifully blistered naan, golden-hued butter chicken, and biryani bejeweled with carrots and peas.
“We attract customers with the cheapest diesel—and the food,” says Gurjot Singh, who has been the truck stop’s manager since 2014, just two years after owners Mintu Pandher and his wife, Amandeep, bought the property. All 10 of their employees relocated to Laramie from the Punjab state of northwest India and now reside in a housing complex behind the gas station.
