Long before I ever picked up a camera, I remember staring out of a bus window at a truck covered in roses, poetry, peacocks, and mirrors — and thinking someone had spent weeks turning a machine into a shrine.

That's not far from the truth. Truck art in Pakistan is a full craft economy: welders build ornate steel crowns for the cab, woodworkers carve wooden panels, and painters — often trained through decades of apprenticeship — layer on the calligraphy, folk verses, and portraits that make every truck one-of-a-kind. Cities like Karachi and Peshawar each have their own visual dialect, from Karachi's dense floral chintz to Peshawar's bolder geometric patterns.

It's easy to drive past it as just decoration. Spend an afternoon in a truck-art workshop, though, and you realize it's one of the most democratic art forms in the country — made for the road, not the gallery, and judged by ordinary people every single day.