In Pakistan, in the workshop of the Court of Buffaloes in Rawalpindi, odd but spectacular trucks are recycled and invented. Their painted and carved bodywork portrays a wealth of artistic imagery, combining religion, politics, pictorial traditions, and popular poetry. The courtyard contains a score of specialized workshops (a mechanic, an electrician, a radiator expert, a painter, a sculptor, etc.). They do not merely decorate the trucks, but build them from scratch using parts recovered from old Bedford trucks dating from the colonial period. The courtyard is a site for the exchange and transmission of knowledge from masters (ustad) to apprentices (chagird) and a meeting-place for the people of the district - schoolboys, traveling merchants, shepherds with their herds, and so on. Offerings and sacrifices are made to avert the hazards of the road; a painted eye, magical signs, and sometimes the figure of Malang, a mystical sufi who haunts sanctuaries, all preserve the truck's passengers from harm.