BEING stuck half-way up a mountain in one of the remotest places on earth chasing elusive snow leopards is all in a day's work for Derbyshire wildlife artist Pollyanna Pickering.

Pollyanna, who hails from the village of Oker, near Matlock, has recently returned from the mountain kingdom of Bhutan, where she got out her trusty sketchbook to record red pandas, rare monkeys and endangered leopards.

"It's a rarely explored area as far as wildlife is concerned with no real tourism there," says Pollyanna. "It's in the high Himalayas. It's not the easiest place to get to but I'm always up for a challenge.

"My original idea was to try and track snow leopards in Mongolia or possibly Pakistan. But then I came across an article on Bhutan where they also have tigers, bears, wolves and a reserve set aside to protect the yeti!"

Sadly, Pollyanna didn't meet the abominable snowman.

"I know it sounds like a joke but they are quite serious out there because there have been so many sightings by villagers that in case something does survive, the government has set aside a large amount of land to protect the habitat. And we are, of course, still discovering new animals, there was a new mammal found only last year – so who knows?"

Away from the yeti, Pollyanna had four main targets to track down.

"The snow leopard was the initial attraction and the only one we didn't see, despite finding footprints," she says. "We did see red pandas, which was very lucky as they are mainly nocturnal. We saw the golden langur monkey, which is very rare, and only lives in the southern foothills of the Himalayas.

"The clouded leopard is even rarer than the snow leopard, but we still got a sighting of one of those and I made sketches of my impressions of that."

Pollyanna won a grant to fund her expedition.

"I was very lucky to get a fellowship from an international arts society in Canada. It was a tremendous honour as I was the first woman granted the fellowship and the first artist from outside Canada and America.

"Part of the deal was that I had to complete a journal of the expedition in writing and sketches. So I was sketching everything, every day.

"It can be really difficult. I have in the past worked in the high Arctic and Siberia which is really hard because of the temperatures. And we have had hairy moments over the years.

"But Bhutan didn't prove particularly dangerous. I felt safer there then anywhere I have been. The people are so happy; I never saw a child cry or whine. It's a particularly happy country with lovely people and beautiful scenery."

Pollyanna has now produced a series of paintings on her adventure entitled Land of the Thunder Dragon – the local people's way of describing Bhutan, after the way thunder in the mountain peaks sounds like a dragon roaring in the heavens.

She was to have unveiled the paintings at Quad in Derby on February 12 but her illustrated talk on her expedition has been postponed due to unforeseen circumstances.

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