Kolkata traffic is astounding-cars, trucks, motorcycles, these three wheeled autos, everyone honking and weaving through the streets cutting each other off. Serious accidents are rare because nobody can get up enough speed to damage each other because there are just too many other vehicles in the way. Still, the number of pedestrians crossing the street or standing in the road was BONKERS. Plus, of course, the cows in the road. We took Ubers because renting a car would be suicidal and that way we didn’t have to worry about communicating the address to the driver-it just went directly to their phone.
This is the main temple at the Belur Math complex in Kolkata. This is probably my favorite sketch from the entire trip. We found a place in the shade and I spent a little over an hour doggedly working on this sketch, trying to finish before they kicked us out (they close midday and then open again in the late afternoon). As was usual, we attracted a lot of attention and people drifted over to either ask us for a selfie (For real, so many requests while we were there. We had to have a strict no selfie policy or else that is all we would have been doing!) or to see what I was up to. We had some nice conversations with some other families enjoying the shade as well.
This is one wing of the enormous family home of Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel prize winning poet and writer. It is HUGE museum about him and his accomplishments and the world events surrounding his life at the turn of the last century. Because it is technically a home, we had to take off our shoes and walk barefoot through the rooms and displays.
I have no idea why there are terracotta pots/vases tied to this tree. I saw several trees like this on our adventures, but I couldn’t ever get a satisfactory answer.
A montage page, bits and pieces of the day. The cab was drawn from a photo because none of them stay still long enough for me to draw. I nearly got run down by it just trying to take a picture!
Trying to draw fascinating flowers in the Botanical Garden, but had to give up partway through this drawing because of the mosquitoes. Too many bites and they swelled up HUGE so I decided to move on.
A colorfully paintined storefront door on the left, and a sculpted framed relief of Ganesh on the right.
On the left: A doorway with what I think might be Kali over looking it and on the right, an older couple walking in front of a worn wall.
We went to the zoo because Luke had never seen a live tiger before. We saw several and got to hear them roar which was a smidge hair raising. I loved all these pink birds and managed a couple sketches before wilting in the heat-around 95 degrees with 70% humidity.
One more post to go!