seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Brazil
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Uruguay
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from T1
seen from Germany
After too many holiday sketches here’s a couple of sketches from back home in Cal!
We are just entering our last month in Kolkata now and I feel like the race is on to try and capture and sketch as many of the beautiful grand old buildings and hidden tumbledown corners as possible.
Another old one from back in March!
Singalila Ridge Trek
A couple of weeks ago we had some of our best friends come to visit us in India. We were so excited to see them and show them our home in Kolkata! As well as pottering around the city, we took them to Darjeeling and ventured into the foothills of the Himalayas to walk the Singalila Ridge Trek.
Over five days we walked over 80km, up and down, over all sorts of different terrain along the border between India and Nepal. Our highest point was 3636m.
Sometimes we were walking in the clouds, at other points we had amazingly clear skies giving us a perfect view of Kanchenjunga and Everest. It was exhausting, freezing and extremely beautiful.
I decided to do one quick drawing from each day, although there are hundreds more amazing scenes I could have sketched... maybe they’ll also make their way onto Indian Inkings at some point!
Rickshaw! Rickshaw!
India has given us the chance to try all sorts of exciting new forms of transport (on exciting new roads with an exciting lack of rules and order!). My journey to work consists of three ‘autos’ or auto-rickshaws, so I take at least six a day. I’ve come to quite enjoy weaving in and out of the traffic, speeding past Indian street life and narrowly avoiding the oncoming buses. I think the trick is to surrender control and trust the driver’s sixth Kolkata-road-sense!
In contrast to the nippy, audacious auto, around the (slightly) quieter backstreets near our flat the calmer, trundling cycle rickshaw is king. With their various comedy horns constantly sounding they can still be pretty noisy. But also strangely elegant, with a precariously balanced figure being dragged along in a slow jerky motion and perched regally high above the surrounding pedestrians.
PS. After a chance meeting with the lovely Utsha Das, these inkings will be adorning notebooks for sale at Pop-up-Haat this weekend - pop in if you’re passing!
Diwali Candles
Today’s inkings are watercolours of the packaging of some of our recent Diwali purchases. Last week the market stalls were suddenly full of brightly coloured packs of candles, fireworks and sparklers, and Tom and I felt we should get into the spirit and indulge our inner pyromaniacs!
We bought some beautiful terracotta diyas, candles (above!) and a selection of some of the tamer-looking fireworks (turns out we are a slightly more safety-conscious breed of pyromaniac than the light-a-rocket-in-the-middle-of-the-busy-street-Indian sort) and had a lot of fun trying them out in our little backyard.
Unfortunately due to neglect and our DIY candle holders (wooden clothes pegs) we also managed to burn a hole in our plastic table cloth (maybe not so safety conscious after all). We still haven’t owned up to Mr and Mrs Das...
Return to Kolkata
We have finally returned to Kolkata and our home for the next 9 months. We live on the ground floor of this building, with ‘Amma’ (as she’s asked us to call her) and Mr Das (as he’s asked us to call him!) upstairs...but frequently popping down to bring us sweets or samples of Amma’s cooking and check on what we are having for dinner.
I’ve just finished my first week back at work in the hospital. It was quite a shock to the system after two weeks holidaying, and pretty challenging after working in Pallium India (where the concept of Palliative Care is really well understood and well implemented- rather different from the rest of India I am coming to realise), but we celebrated its successful completion with a lovely, if rather over-A/C’d, dinner out in Park Street (I was freezing for once!).
Despite anticipating many challenges ahead in the work department, its really nice to end the galavanting and to start to settle in to one place. Today we are going on a mission to find a comfy mattress and to make it feel a bit more homely...
Rajeev Stores, Beach Road
I’ve been told that Kerala has over a hundred varieties of banana. Whether this is true or not, on most days, Rajeev sells at least seven of these, including the special Kerala red variety! Yum!
