Bunches of black cloth and tassels are meant to flap away evil spirits on the road. The jangle of bumper chains on the Tarmac, meant to ward off mechanical failure, warns of the lorry’s approach and long-lashed, painted eyes stare down the evil eye.These customised paint jobs are not cheap. At Muhammad Shafi’s workshop in Rawalpindi, 22 artisans are on call to paint designer motifs freehand, to hammer speciality tin borders, to upholster the cab in gold-trimmed leatherette or to carve hardwood cab-doors as elaborate as a jewel box.Applying an extravagant “disco paint job” after building wooden struts around a bare chassis that arrives with just the engine, steering wheel and driver’s seat can cost 200,000 rupees, more than a year’s wages for a lorry driver. Even a touch-up job, needed every couple of years to brighten painted panels dulled by dust-choked roads, costs 30,000 rupees.The workshops will repair and overhaul old trucks, or recycle old ones into spare parts.

A plain white Bedford I glimpsed outside Karachi was not a rare albino lorry. It was speeding to the workshop for a metamorphosis, and it drew double-takes because it looked so naked in its monochrome undercoat. Soon the broad rear panel would be repainted with a starry ground to feature Buraq, a demure winged she-centaur Muslims believe carried the Prophet to Heaven. It is a classic motif, more popular even than Tarzan, Rambo or the Bollywood actress Raveena Tandon.”Visual anthropologists” at Paris University who have painstakingly catalogued the symbols in Pakistani lorry art say the emblems painted on the transport are meant to ward off bad fortune and attract prosperity, giving an extra blessing for a merchant’s goods.Many of the traditional symbols are holdovers from the caravans on the Silk Road. No embroidered camel blanket could be more intricate than the designs on everyday Bedford lorries that dominate Pakistan’s highways. There cannot be enough talismans or lucky amulets, the reasoning goes, when traversing mountain passes where accidents are frequent and gangs of dacoits lurk.

Bribe-seeking police may be around the next curve, and their eyes can be distracted by beautiful pictures when they are scrutinising the truck for any minor infraction.Museums in Hamburg and Washington DC have each shipped out an entire Bedford truck, hauled off the Grand Trunk Road to display as the epitome of contemporary folk art. Even the gearshift on Munir Hussain’s Bedford is enhanced with fancy tape that co-ordinates with the fake rosebuds and flickering fairy lights inside. He would not dream of driving a dilapidated old wreck.”I fix my gari so she is beautiful and is admired,” Mr Hussain says. “I spend all my waking hours inside her.” The loving way he strokes his lorry to a shine and keeps buying the latest coloured baubles to tack on the dashboard would make many women jealous.. Japan’s first spy satellites were blasted into orbit yesterday, causing North Korea to warn that the move could spark a regional arms race. Until yesterday, Japan’s space programme had previously been limited to strictly non-military missions.Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister, said in Tokyo: “I have high expectations that the satellites can help boost our country’s own information-gathering capability.”The satellites, which have conventional photographic and radar-imaging capabilities, are expected to last five years.

If all goes well, they will orbit Earth at 250 to 370 miles and supply images regardless of the weather. Officials say the satellites are not intended to provoke North Korea, and will be used for other missions, such as monitoring crop conditions, weather or natural disasters.But a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry was reported by the official Korea Central News Agency as saying: “Japan will be held wholly responsible for sparking a new arms race in north-east Asia.”North Korea has warned that Japan’s plans to launch satellites were a hostile activity and a grave threat. But Mr Koizumi said his government had no intention of acquiring the military capability to launch pre-emptive attacks against another nation.Officials acknowledge the programme was prompted in 1998 when a North Korean Taepodong ballistic missile flew over Japan’s main island and crashed into the Pacific off Alaska. A North Korean government spokesman, quoted in the North’s official media last week, hinted that if Tokyo went ahead with the launch Pyongyang might test-fire a long-range missile.Akihiro Kobe, a Japanese Defence Agency spokesman, said: “We have no specific information indicating North Korea is pushing ahead with preparations for missile tests in response to Japan’s satellite launch.” A lack of clear data on what Japan’s enigmatic Communist neighbour is doing is one reason Tokyo wants its own eyes in orbit.Japan gets its intelligence primarily from the United States, which has spy satellites and frequent surveillance flights from an air base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.