India, Sept. 5 -- The national capital and its satellite towns were hit by a familiar monsoon nightmare on Friday - waterlogged roads, vehicles crawling through flooded stretches and traffic jams stretching for kilometres - barely a week before Delhi hosts the 18th BRICS Summit.

The worst of the chaos unfolded on the expressway connecting Delhi and Gurugram, where a traffic snarl stretching nearly 10 kilometres left thousands of commuters trapped for hours. Several motorists HT spoke to said they could not cover even six kilometres in three hours.

The jam began near Shiv Murti in Delhi's Mahipalpur and stretched up to Udyog Vihar Phase IV in Gurugram by 6.30pm, according to Gurugram traffic police.

Thousands of commuters were caught in...