Pakistani Handicrafts

A traditional hand-painted horse carriage is not limited for the use of only the royal family or aristocracy!  This can be your daily ride

Traditional Pakistani Tanga ( Credit = Pakistanilife.com)

if you reside in a Pakistani city or a village. Typical Pakistani horse carriages or “Tanga” are hand-painted and embellished with glass chandeliers and leather tops. The owner cum driver of the horse carriage is generally known as a Kochovan.  Kochovans have a special place and character in a Pakistani society. Though tangas are not liked at all in big cities because there slow moving “vehicles” create traffic problems but in the rural areas and small cities, people really value and appreciate their role. Nearly every school going kid uses a horse carriage as a school bus at least once. 

The tradition of painting unique designs goes back to ancient times when Indian rajas and maharajas used these custom built carriages for travel purposes.  If someone can afford, elephants were the top choice. Palkis were the most common during those days which were placed on elephants. Elephants were considered as a true royal transport and with the passage of time; they totally vanished from the streets. But horse carriages ( tangas) still maintain their presence even today despite the advent and popularity of motor vehicles in the cities of not just Indian subcontinent but across the world. There is a definite need to link this antique type of transport with cultural and social values of their respective societies. 

Pakistani cities are heavily littered with a lot of animal driven carts (mules, cows and donkeys besides horses) and carriages for transportation of passengers and goods alike even today! The presence of these slow moving carts creates traffic nuisances. Just imagine someone driving at 15 miles an hour in front

Pakistani Rakshaw Credit: Lahoreigirls.com

of you on a busy freeway! These carts are still in use because of general public inability to pay the high costs associated with gasoline driven motors. Since it is impossible to eliminate animals from the city streets, therefore a couple of Pakistani cities Municipal Corporation came up with the idea of converting these ugly looking carriages into living examples of culture and “heritage”.  

Pakistani city governments not only issue street permits to operate these carts but also subsidize the decorative expenses of its licensed carriages. There is also a strong tradition of decorating Trucks and Rickshaws in Pakistan along with carriages. Rickshaw is a two-stroke motorized version of a carriage use to transport passenger and goods. Foreigners in Pakistan have known rickshaws as space ships. Not every rickshaw driver is a keen art lover but he has to decorate his rickshaw in order to attract passengers.

Rickshaw is kind of a Pakistani societies symbol of progress because in Bangladesh (which was a part of Pakistan till 1971) still uses humans to pull their rickshaw’s (also known as human rickshaws- that scene is not pretty humane though).

Pakistani Truck Credit: Ali Akbar Khan

Pakistani truck drivers are also crazy about decorating their trucks as American truck drivers. The only difference is that the Pakistanis drivers do not use too much high tech toys. They use different themes (from religious to political) and styles to decorate their beloved trucks to express their personalities.