Thread by @visakanv

On my recent trip to India (Trichy & Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu), I was *fascinated* by the trucks, lorries and buses on the roads. Going through my notes, I find myself wanting to look them up. The brand that stood out the most for me was Ashok Leyland: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashok_Ley…

There is clearly a language here of patterns, colors, ideas, motifs. I'm obviously not the first person to think "wow these trucks are fascinating" – there's a whole documentary about it! @hornpleasedoc

and a picture book by the same name hornpleaseindia.com

More pics by @daneckstein

if you know what you're looking at, you can discern a lot of information about the lorries and their drivers. The names of the owner(s), their specific religious denomination, where they're from, even social and political beliefs

(From Wikipedia) I find that even the stock Ashok Leyland trucks somehow have a lot of personality to them, even before all the paint and frills

I would love to hear from the designers who made them, and I'd be curious to hear what truckers elsewhere in the world think of them

And – of course! – if you go to different parts of India, you'll find that the different regions have different styles of truck art! I was only in TN. Here are some pics from trucks elsewhere in the country – Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and... rainbow fans?

A wild Bezos appeared!

Apparently things get even wilder next door in Pakistan

as a backdrop for fashion

(Fahad Hussayn, 2012)

Of course the Japanese have a whole subculture devoted to their own cyberpunk version of this – Dekotora ("deco-truck") trucks

An aesthetic goal for my future work: to figure out an natural, organic, intermediate step between this and the desi stuff

Do Americans have an equivalent? I'm googling "american truck decorations, american truck show", "beautiful big rig", this is what I got – a lot of macho steel and chrome

googling "european truck show" now

Suddenly got reminded of Filipino Jeepneys!! I saw these IRL when I visited Cebu in 2015. Again, it might look like indescipherable chaos to outsiders, but if you look closely + start to observe the patterns, there's a whole language here. Similar to yet distinct from Desi trucks

Over to Thailand. I wonder what's the story with all the Michelin men toys/figures...?

buses in Haiti

same same but different

football is a bigger deal here

good point from @the_nickolias – if you want to look for art on vehicles in the USA, you should probably look at food trucks. These are pretty neat!