India and Back Again Bun Toons! YAY!

The World Traveller Returns!

Sorry this is on a Sunday, rather than a Saturday…believe it or not, I’ve only been home about five days, and I’m still a day behind because of jet lag, date lines and a host of other nonsense.

Today you get snapshots of my trip to India to attend Comicon in Delhi.  Count yourself lucky…I could have brought home slides.

Not kidding about the traffic.  I’m fairly sure they drove on the left side of the road in India, but it was sometimes hard to tell.  Mostly they drove on the ROAD… but WHERE they drove… was always an option.

As I said, I’ve only been home a few days, and haven’t quite adjusted to life back in Canada.  I miss the hawks and Kryptos already, and might consider a small falcon or eagle for the back yard, just for comfort.

Ty the Guy IN!

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Because the local currency was unfamiliar to me, I asked the convention volunteers what a good price to charge for my sketches was, and was told about five hundred Rupees was the upwards end of what I could charge.  So, five hundred Rupees it was.  And this is the sort of sketch you’d get for that…

It turns out, 500 Rupees is about seven dollars, something we didn’t figure out until the last day.  So…Indian fans got my sketches for, shall we say, a little less expensive than an American convention goer would get one.  At the speed I was replacing markers (there was a booth selling markers there for five bucks a marker), it almost cost more to draw the pictures than I was getting from the fans.  But that’s okay.  We saw a lot of happy faces when they got their sketch.

The name tag they made me wear was a little large.  I think it was so people at the back of the line could read it…but it got in the way of my drawing arm quite a bit.

I’m also not kidding about the pollution.  Delhi is considered the most polluted city on Earth…they DREAM of being as clean as Beijing, the complainers from China.

The day we arrived, we thought it was fog…but it turns out people like to burn their trash there, and so you’re living inside of a fairly constant smoke and fire situation from ten million trash fires.  Here’s a photo of a neigbourhood dump site.  Note the Hawks and Kryptos in the photo…they are literally everywhere.

The volunteers were as nice and friendly a bunch of Convention Helpers I’ve ever met.  I wish I could have stayed and hung with the gang another few days…but apparently I had to get home because of my OWN children.

Special shout out to Ishan, Harry and Abhilasha, our personal handlers.  (I’ve misspelled Harry’s name, but he kept insisting it was “Harry” when it utterly was not.)

The local creators had a wealth of great comics to show off, I wish they were for sale in Canada, as some of these series hooked me and I want to read the next issue.  My faves, by far, were…

…pretty well anything by this guy, Shamik Dasgupta…he’s a writer/artist with some SKILLS.

and…

Super Sikh.  The title says it all.  Hoo boy, this was fun.

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It was ALSO about India…the anticipation of going, rather than the having been.

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