A Sunday Expedition

During the beginning of this year I plodded through the snow in a forest in Quebec, now somewhere at the end of the same year I plodded through a tropical jungle. Last year I helped hunt mushrooms on the ground, this year I focused a pair of binoculars towards birds up on the trees. All these adventures are due to the many strange, unusual and interesting people who come my way. The latest adventure is thanks to my new neighbours who are not just bird watchers but avid sketchers as well.What's more, they are coffee drinkers too. One of them is an illustrator and the other is an animator. 

 We went over to Banerghatta National Park on Sunday, very early in the morning, to do some bird watching. Since it was so early in the day, the many names of the birds did not register in my head but from what I remember in the jumble, it went something like bee eater, flycatcher,drongo, paradise bird, red bulbul, bee catcher, honey sucker... But some of the birds I saw were supposed to be rare and all of them were very colourful and pretty.We heard lions roaring in the distance, then a park keeper came and shooed us away because there were wild elephants roaming freely somewhere there. We saw elephant dung on the way back.

I am a ground watcher, at least that is what I can photograph

Then the inevitable Chai break since Chai is better than Coffee in these small stalls that serve them. I did not try the cake.

Then we went to the zoo which was rather sad. The animals and birds were moth eaten and forlorn but we sketched them anyway and much to my relief I found out that I could still sketch even though I have not being doing it as regularly. The bright and clashing colours of clothes that people wore contrasted greatly against the captive animals and made me want to photograph them up close, but I settled for distance.

 A signboard asking you to keep your distance lest the caged, chained, listless, colourless animals viciously attack you.

The sketches
These are the animator's sketches - 

 These are the illustrator's sketches

And these are some of my sketches below which are done with a water soluble graphite pencil  -

I have to add here, a picture of my foldable, made in China sketching stool -

We finished the morning with a fabulous feast at the Bengali Bhojohri Manna.You have to pause a good day with filter coffee so we did. There were other adventures too, but I will stop talking about them here.

And add just one more picture of a lovely gift I received here

The illustrator

The animator