Keeping up with the Khans

Published: BBC Top Gear, UK, Geographical, UK, FHM, Trucking, USA,

Keeping up with the Khans

Published: BBC Top Gear, UK, Car Magazine, South Africa, Geographical, UK, Channel4.com, FHM, Latvia,

It’s the middle of the morning in Pakistan and the Himalayan sun is bouncing off the chintzy reflective flowers of Jhanzab’s opulently decorated truck. He’s just been pulled over by the Chief of Police for incorrect licence papers and is about to receive a 500-rupee-fine.

This is where I come in, accompanies by Rachel, who’s already enthusiastically taking pictures of the truck, and Mohammed, the local ‘Big Cheese’. Mohammed starts talking to the Chief of Police in hushed, conspiratorial tones and after a few moment the policeman turn to Jhanzab.

“We can forget this fine ever existed,” he says, “if you take these two girls in your truck up the Karakoram Highway.

Jahnzab looks bemused, “Why would anybody volunteer to travel for two days in a lumbering truck on one of the most terrifyingly in-hospitable roads in the world? But if this is what the ‘Big Cheese’ wants, this is what he gets, so we toss our bags into the cab and climb aboard.

The Karakoram Highway is the main road that connects the Pakistani capital Islamabad to the northern territories and eventually China. It follows the Silk Road the ancient trading route, through the North Western Frontier Province – and area crawling with rebels, which the British Foreign Office suggests tourists give a wide berth. As well as such man-made hazards, nature provides a few of its own in the shape of formidable stomach-churning drops along the cliff edge as you climb through the mountains.

The trade-off is the view, as this route forms the meeting point of the three great mountain ranges, the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram and the Himalayas. It’s truly one of the most spectacular site on earth, but one that could be all to brief if Jhanzab makes a mistake behind the wheel. Its enough to get even the staunchest atheist praying.

But I should have had more faith in Jhanzab. Given the amount of dedication that’s gone into decorating this truck, he’s not about to get reckless. The Pakistani truckers attitude is: ‘If a driver can’t afford to be garish, maybe he’s a bad driver.’ And this truck is garish with a capitol G. When everybody else was ‘chucking out the chinz’ Pakistani truck drivers were buying it by the bucket load.

It costs a fortune but the owners argue it is well worth the expense, as no self-respecting merchant would trust his goods to a driver with a shabby truck. With every inch of the truck covered in bright reflectors, sculptures and poms poms we’re talking two-fold bling – Asia style. Not only is this, ‘Keeping up with the Khans,’ the decoration has the added bonus of earning drivers protection from, ‘Him’ upstairs.

Decoratively, they’re a riot of embossed metal fish, birds and flowers. Reflective plastic, the kind used on regular car indicators, is cut into intricate patterns and stuck on. The sides of the trucks are hand painted with patterns, mountain scenes and even the odd film star. Bright metal sculptures, pom-poms are attached to the outside and twinkly metal fringes skirt the floor.

The inside of the cab is given the same treatment. The door panels, ceiling and seating are garishly upholstered and adorned with all manner of religious trinkets and charms. Not one inch is left uncovered, which even includes painting the underside of the bonnet and wheel arches.

Disturbingly the windscreen gets the same ornate treatment, being adorned with pom-poms, hanging trinkets, wreathes of flowers and stickers of, in Jhanzab’s case, lovebirds. I definitely can’t see out very well and I’m fairly certain Jahnzab can’t either.

Squinting through the chintz and the dust, I think back to how we got ourselves here in the first place. Our search for a truck to take us up the Karakoram Highway started in Peshawar on the Afghan border, a town that has more guns than chapattis and is home to many Taliban rebels. It’s here, tucked away in hundreds of paintyards that local truck drivers can pimp their ride.

We’ve been tipped off about a particularly good one and head off to find it in a taxi. The dusty streets are lined with small shops and men milling around in traditional dress, a loose fitting, light coloured pyjama suit. They cover their heads with huge cloths, sip tea and sensibly try to do very little in the heat. There’s not a woman in sight.

Coveting anything shiny: Pakistan is a nation of magpies. On spotting something that sparkles or twinkles they swoop, scoop and hang it on the dashboard. This doesn’t just apply to trucks: tinsel and sparkle decorates everything from roundabouts to tractors even wheelbarrows get the jingle jangle treatment.

The paintyard is full of pakstani del-boys hawking their wares. A teenage boy, selling the ubiquitous cup of sweet tea, carefully balances a silver tray with teapot and cups as he picks his way over the dusty floor that’s strewn with paper and plastic.

The cab and body of the truck is almost entirely constructed of wood and these enormous wooden carcasses lie like whale skeletons in a mass graveyard. Mechanics crouch down fixing the 1960s and 1970s Bedford trucks that really should have been scrapped years ago. The last thing you’d imagine they’d be doing is driving up the narrow and treacherous mountain passes.

Asafaddin, 38, a truck driver for fourteen years, has brought his truck to this yard to be stripped and completely re-furbishes. He has picked this yard because it has the best mechanics and the decorators are au-fait with the very latest trends.

‘I have told the decorators that there should be no other truck like mine. I want it to be the best on the road,’ he says brandishing a cloth in order to stem the flow of sweat running from his forehead. ‘A good truck is a status symbol,’ his voice drops as he adds, ‘there is a lot of competition between the drivers and if you have a good truck it shows you are rich and you get a good reputation.’ Reputation is everything in this game.

The yard looks to be in chaos, but amongst the dust and dirt I suspect everything has its place. A teenager wheels a hugh exhaust pipe past in a wheelbarrow. Around the perimeter of the yard are small, ramshackle wooden huts. Some are mechanic’s shops full of spare parts. Others are for making the decorations where teams of men are sawing wood into the shapes of flowers, while other fashion nickel into creatures such as parrots or abstract patterns.

Crouching on the floor closer to the door a young boy is sticking brightly coloured vinyl to the shapes. Whilst in a wooden shack tucked away in the corner a man wrestles a bright red piece of material through a sewing machine – upholstering for the inside.

Embossed nickel has been the big trend in the last few years, green is the hot colour of the month and stickers, vinyl sticky material that can be cut into any shape, has begun to surpass the painting. But that’s not to say it is old hat.

The whole scene really took off in the eighties. ‘I drove my first properly decorated truck about seven years ago,’ explains Assfadin. He earns around 5000 (about fifty pounds) Pakistani Ruppees a month and to decorate the truck costs about 300,000 rupees (roughly two hundred and eighty pounds). Its an expensive business. But when your pride is at stake – Asafaddin, like everyone else, is happy to shell out.

I talk about our plan to head up the Karakoram Highway and Asfadin grimaces. He recalls a time when a glacier made the road impassable. ‘I was on the way to Skardu and found a glacier was blocking the road. We tried to cross it but became stuck in the icy snow. We were stranded for two days without food and water until the Pakistani army came to rescue us.’

Back in the cab with Jhanzab at the wheel we have been fortunate enough to encounter no such obstacles. This area has some of the highest mountains in the world, K2 and Nanga Parbatt among them. The landscape is barren, defying anything to grow in it. The roads are narrow and the corners sharp. The level of concentration required to drive is immense.

After six hours of slow progress I’m getting bling blindness the jingle jangle is starting to get the better of me.

We reach a bridge that crosses the Indus. The truck grinds to almost standstill before easing gently down onto the wooden slats that cover the bridge. The slats jump and shift unpredicatably as the truck weight moves across them. Our hearts jump to the same beat.

When we finally get over the bridge to a checkpoint, a Policeman pulls the ab over and points at us incredulously. He orders us down immediately.

‘What are you doing on a truck,?’ he asks whilst inspecting our passports, ‘Going to Skardu,’ I reply. At that moment a minibus comes careering off the bridge and as the policeman flags it down. It contains two lean European climbers off to tackle the Himalayas. After the policeman has a brief conflab with the driver we are unceremoniously dispatched onto the minibus.

As we head off into the mountains I think abouthow White Van Man in his Mercedes Sprinter dashing around the M25 really is a world away from the jaunty trucks and the harsh conditions the drivers cope with here. Then I smile, thinking of Jhanzab, the Jimmy Saville of the sub-continent, to happily jingle-jangle his way up through the Himalayas.

Photographs ©Rachel Palmer