Exclusive | NYC cab driver tells all about life behind the wheel from celeb encounters to a holdup at gunpoint

Jack Trunz was exhausted the night Khakendra Pun picked him up in his yellow cab at LaGuardia Airport.Trunz’s flight from Nashville had been delayed three hours, causing him to miss a buddy’s 30th birthday party.The last thing he wanted was to jabber with his taxi driver.But Trunz, 30, an investment analyst in Manhattan, didn’t have much choice.

Because schmoozing with customers is what Pun does, regaling them with stories of growing up in Nepal, the 77 jobs he’s had since coming to the United States in 1991, his exploits as a New York City cabbie for the last decade, and the 493-page book about his passengers, “From the Top of Mount Everest to the Winding Streets of New York City,” which he self-published.He sells the tome from his cab for $39.99 as well as on his website, and half of each sale goes to the Ulleri Foundation, a non-profit he started to open a medical clinic in a village in Nepal.Trunz was fascinated.“It was honestly the highlight of my day,” he told The Post.“I said, ‘Tell me more.’ It was one of those situations where I was, like, ‘I wanna root for this guy.’ He seems like a good human being, and we need more of those.”It turns out Pun’s faced some wild encounters on the road.He claimed he once had a tryst with a female customer — and was held up at gunpoint another time.In 2020, he picked up two guys from Midtown Manhattan to bring to the Bronx.

One got out in Harlem and said his friend guy would pay.“At the end of the trip, I said, ‘How are you goin’ to pay? He said, ‘I’ll pay cash.’ He came out from the backseat to give me the money, and he said to roll down the window, and I did.

The next thing I know he takes his gun out and says, ‘Give me whatever you got.’ I thought my life was over,” he recalled to The Post.“I gave him my wallet with 60-something dollars, and he also took my phone so I couldn’t call the police.He just took off and I had to figure out my way to get back to Manhattan,�...