Old Travel Sketch Book

A two-decade old travel sketch book uncovered un-dusted, its artwork re-appreciated, and memories cherished…

Tibet has always been my dream destination since young. I copied the palace straight out of a brochure I found in a travel fair in 1992. However, having the large empty square built by the Chinese government right in front of it would look boring. I imagined it would look majestic with an old city looking up to it.
Strangely no yellow spots appeared on this 20 year old drawing.

I thought this sketch was too good to give away (actually took quite a bit of time to draw the details), hence I had kept it for myself. Unfortunately, yellow spots had stained the drawing. At the time of drawing this in 1992, I wasn’t aware which country had such beautiful architecture. I only saw some pictures of them and knew vaguely they existed somewhere in the Himalayas. This was drawn from imagination. Later, I learnt that the country was Bhutan (quite unheard of at that time).

This is a photocopy of a 1992 sketch. The original was given to a colleague in an Audit firm which I was attached to during internship. I liked the symphony of buildings that form the Registan Square in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Inspired by the scene in the novel “Book and Sword”, I drowned the whole city with sand, except of course for the square!

This was another sketch which the original was given to a colleague in the Audit firm when I was an intern in 1992. You can tell that it was simple and would not have taken too much time to draw (that’s why I didn’t have a second thought of giving it away:-)! Looking at it now, I think the nomads looked oversized and the horses too small! The way the Gers (Mongolian tents) were tied to the ground was also not accurately drawn.

My first adventure was in Nepal in 1990. As with all first timers, the adventure was most unforgetable. Images of the places got etched in my mind. Here, I imagined the Kathmandu valley being shrouded in a thin veil of morning mist, exposing only the top of the monkey temple hill, with the medieval city in the foreground.

In 1990, Lawrence and I went for our first trekking adventure at the Annapurna santuary in Nepal. This 1992 drawing depicted us resting on a huge block of ice, admiring the Hiunchuli waterfall slotting its gush into the narrow gap between the ice block and the rockwall. On the return leg of the trek, we saw a beautiful rainbow. — with Lawrence Teh and Shiva Joshi.

The original sketch was given to a colleague in the Audit firm when I was an intern in 1992. This drawing looked grossly out of proportion. This was supposed to be somewhere in Ladakh in India.

This is a romanticised depiction of Thyangboche, a mountain village about 3 to 4 walking days from the Everest Base Camp. It probably looked more like this when Edmund Hillary walked through this village on his way to climb Everest in 1953.

The original sketch was given to a colleague in the Audit firm when I was an intern in 1992. This obviously looked out of proportion. In 2000, my wife and I took a ferry cruise down the Irrawady river and saw this view. There was no floating village at the base of the hill! Moreover, the place was wrongly signed off as Bagan, it should be Mandalay.

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