Tributaries of the Ganges

This is my first attempt at creating a Beck map, after Harry Beck, creator of the famous London Underground map. Daniel Huffman (also author of the Cartastrophe blog) has some up on his other blog Something About Maps and they inspired me to try out my own.

It's been made completely in Illustrator, above a map I obtained off Wikipedia Commons. Thus, I'd be grateful if any errors are pointed out.

The Tiger Census 2010

While this is a diagrammatic chart, not a map, it does have a spatial component so I will create a post out of it. The Indian Tiger Census results came out today, and it's heartening to know that there's been an increase in the tiger population. I hope this is the beginning of a rising trend, and look forward to more wild tigers in the near future!

I visualised the data as an exercise in using Illustrator and InDesign; it was quite interesting to actually use ruler measurements to accurately place the ellipses and the median lines. There are definitely faster ways of doing this, but sometimes it's nice to have total control over every single element on an artboard.

Draft Map of Uppalapadu

Uppalapadu is a gorgeous bird sanctuary near my current town of residence, and I visit it often. It's home to spot-billed pelicans, painted storks and black-headed ibises, and they are literally present in the thousands. I haven't come across any other site, anywhere, with this sort of bird density, and I consider myself really lucky to be living so close to one. This map is a draft version, created using ground knowledge, Google Earth and Adobe Illustrator. A hat-tip to Nafisa for teaching me how to use the pen tool in AI; I'm very grateful.

I'm currently trying to get my website up (www.shashanksrinivasan.com); it's being a bit painful, but soon I'll have a portal to display both my cartographic work as well as my photography, and I hope I'll be able to create cross-connections between the two.