Italy - The Scouts

Posn - East Coast Sardegna - 40 30 N / 10 38 E

The institution of Scouts completed a hundred years of its existence in the
year 2007 and everyone other then the Indian govt seems to have issued reams
of stamps to commemorate the occasion. Pictured above is one of the sheets
released by the Italians for the occasion. I am putting this here simply
because so many people have been asking for Scouts stamps on the internet
bulletin boards, that I am sure that I am missing out on their significance.

I actually was in the scouts. I distinctly remember wearing my brothers
hand-me-downs to the parades. The only thing I took to those parades, which
was my own, was this round ferrule type thing through which we knot the
scarf and a fierce will not to parade.

And that is what we did in the scouts, I swear. We paraded, saluted that
three fingered salute and read some rules off some blue book. Which was
immediately taken back as soon as the parade was finished.

Of course the stamps prove that some scouts play the guitar around the
campfire and do canoeing, but I assure you that the only thing remotely like
that in my two years with the scouts was to move some stones near a hill.
And I don't like hills and I didn't like those stones.

The Map

Posn : South East of Sicily - 36 18 N 018 11 E

First off, please forgive me for the long absense off the blog. I wish I
could say that it was for a good reason like global hunger, but I was
actually busy killing friends and strangers on the Team Fortress servers.
After a moth or so of that, I find myself again in the safe sanity of
bobbing along in the middle of the sea. This time in the middle of the
Lagoon - Something the US Navy calls the Mediterian. I don't particularly
like the Medi. Too crowded for my taste and some of the worst weathers that
I have faced in my seafaring life has been in these waters.

But hey new waters translate into new stamps don't they? I had gone to the
beautiful Italian city of Trieste and actually stepped out to visit the
International Maritime Institute to have a look-see, but it turns out that
the place shut down few months back. Just my luck. Someone who knows someone
tells me that there was some scandal. Money taking and all that. But don't
tell anyone.

Anyway, Not to make it a total loss, I went over to the charming post office
in the city centre where they have a really nice postal museum, with
postmarks from as far back as the 1800. Pretty neat stuff.

I got this sheet from there. I love maps of any kind and one of the
bemnifits of sailing at sea is that you are sorrounded by charts, some of
them really old. In my last ship, I came across a chart of New Zaeland,
where the credit for the plotting was given to Captain Cook.

So I'm pleased as a plum to present this map sheet. It seems to tell us the
path from the cities of L'aquila to Foggia and probably the name of the
route is "tratturo Magno. The route obviously passes through mountains and
we see in the stamp a mountain range with sheep in the fore ground. A
beautiful stamp sheet.

75 Years of the Indian Airforce.

Its only so long that I will be able to use to excuse of setting things in order before starting to post more regularly. :)

And it is time I put up some more stamps of India. I have written earlier about the Philatelic account I have with India Post and so on coming back, I was surrounded with the stamps released by India over the past five months.

One of the neat sheets I got was this one released on the Platinum Jubilee (1932 - 2007) of the Indian Air Force.

The Indian Air Force was officially established on 8 October 1932. But by the time they actually got around to flying their planes it was 1st April 1933. So it's probably apt that I got the 75 years of the Air force in 2008! The IAF inetially compromised of six RAF-trained officers and 19 Havai Sepoys (air soldiers) and four Wapiti Airplanes. The Wapiti is thus aptly pictured on the main sheet on the lower left.

The others featured on the main sheet from top Left are the Dhruv, the AWACS and an IL 78 refuelling two Su-30 airplanes.

The neat thing about this sheet, is that on either sides of the sheet, are the pictures of the planes that have accompanied the IAF in this 75 years journey. The planes on the left side from top to bottom are: The Toofani , Mi 26 Helicopter (The biggest Helicopter in the world) , Gnat, Packet (C 119), Hunter and the Jaguar.

On the Right from top to bottom are: Dakota DC-3, Mig 21, AN 32, Mirage 2000, Vampire 52 and finally the Mig 25 (Foxbat).

A very comprehensive history of the IAF can be found here on the IAF website.

As you can see the FDC released on the occasion is a stunner as well. When taken with the previous released stamps and FDCs of the humble Gnat, 16 Sqn of the Air force and the sheet released on the 100 years of Man's first flight, the sheet finds itself in good company.

New links

Over the last few months I have been mailing to a lot of new friends and today I added two of their links on the left out here.

The first is Glenn from canada who has a nice blog about postcards. He is trying to collect cards from all over.

Secondly I have put a link to Zhou fan's blog. He is a new friend from China and has been sending me covers from that country on a regular basis.

Thanks to the both of you!

In case I have missed out links of any of you, please do write in and I'll put it up.

Tintin

I don't think its ever going to be possible to show all the mail that has come in during my absence, but I'll try to put a few of them over the next few days. Today I'm showing this amazing cover and sheet sent to me by Kalpana from Germany. I had posted the sole Tintin stamp on my blog earlier and Kalpana had offered to send across the sheet. I collect comic stamps and am a huge fan of Tintin, so I was thrilled to receive this.

Cotard and Eric also sent me the sheet in mint condition (Thanks to the two of them) but enclosed in the cover was the sheet of Tintin comic covers that I didn't even know was out. It is an amazing sheet and I am eternally grateful to Kalpana for this.

Tintin is one of the most recognisable figure in all fiction and since his first arrival in 1929, he has sold more then half a million comics in more then fifty languages. It seems improbable that most of Tintins travels were conceived by an armchair traveller in the early 1900's when media was so restricted. It wasn't before the "Tintin and the Picaros" (1976) that Herge actually went to some of the places he showed us all a long time before that. The last stamp in the series of the comic cover is of the comic called "Tintin and alpha Art" - A story that herge couldn't finish before he passed away in March 1983.

Personally I haven't been able to read the first three comics as of now. Something I plan to correct very soon.

Thanks again Kalpana. :)

Paquebot mail

Paquebot Letters posted in Dakar & Lome

As the last post said, I am back from the trip at sea. It was pretty eventful trip by all means and we throughly enjoyed it. But on the Postal front, it was an exciting time. I was able to visit a lot of post offices in foreign lands and posted to a lot of people from obscure spots on the globe.

One of the things I am happiest about is the use of the Paquebot mail that I tried for the first time. I had written extensively about the use of Paquebot mail before I left for the ship and let us do a slight recap of the concept before we go any further.

The ship is considered as part of the country of the place that it is registered in. So technically letter's posted on the ship are considered as posted in that particular country and hence are legally accepted as proper means of postage as long as the vessel hands them to the port post office on the first port of arrival.

The beauty of the Paquebot mail is that the cancellation of the stamps is done by the country through which the letter is posted. This would normally never happen. In the picture above you can see two of the Paquebot mails that i posted to myself. The top one is posted in Dakar (Senegal) and the bottom one was posted in Lome (Togo).

Paquebot canceled at Panama

A bit about the envelopes themselves. On the top of the envelope is the marking with the "Paquebot Mail - Posted at high seas" By all accounts I could have written this by hand as well, but this gave a better look, so dad sent it across to me on the ship.

The stamp on the left top is the stamp of the ship and this ship was the M.T Maroni, registered in the port of Willemstad in Netherland Antilles (This is why the stamps are from Netherland Antilles). The notations below the name refer to the GRT (Gross Registered Tonnage), NRT (Net Registered Tonnage), DWT (Deadweight) and the BHP (Power of the vessels Engine).

And finally the stamp on the bottom right is the stamp of the vessels captain. As per Paquebot regualtions the letter has to be signed and stamped by either the ships captain or the purser.

I did try to send these mails from pretty much every post that I went to, and surprisingly the mail reached from most of the places. The best were the African countries of Senegal and Togo, where they were decent enough to put nice cancellations and send it across. A month late, but still in one piece!Paquebot canceled in Corpus Christi, USA

Panama topped the list of countries that requires to put some money into making new postmarks. You can see why by the picture posted up there. I had heard that posting Paquebot through the US would be a pain, but surprisingly the only mail that I posted from Corpus christi, Texas did reach in good order and I was surprised to see that they even put a hand-stamped postmark and not one of their usual machine made ones.

Some of the other chaps who were nice enough to put the Paquebot on their blogs were Eric from the My Philately Blog, and again Eric from Jura. Thanks to the both of them for the nice write ups along with the pictures. George from Taiwan had also put up the pictures on his blog but I can't seem to open his page right now.

Thanks to you all!

Back Home !

Hi All.

As the title says, I am back home. The last few months were great and I did cover a huge chunk of the globe in those months. But the time was very hectic and it feels great to be back home and wind down for a while.

Firstly, it was simply amazing to come back home and see the pile of letters that you folks have been sending over to my address for the last few months. I loved all of them and thanks a ton for them. It will take me a few days to deal with them and I will be putting up a lot of them on the blog over the next few days.

Anyway, thanks again to all of you & I want to let you know that I'm open for swaps again of Indian stamps.

Cheers all!

Togo - Sir Edmund Hillary

Location : Off Yucatan - 17 08 N, 081 36 W

News reached a little late on the ship, but I came to know about the passing of Hillary yesterday. I had put up a couple of stamps on the 50 years of the climbing of the Everest many months back on this page.

This stamp is part of a bigger miniature released by Togo on the occasion of the mellinium. There are apparently ten of such sheets, based on the ten decades of the century. This stamp is part of the sheet on the fifties. I would have liked to use this stamp for a better occasion. Probably the 75th year and not for the passing of that man.

Chile - Santa

Location : The Carribs - 13 55 N, 079 40 W

Things were crazy in Panama this call and I'm sorry but all got out was one paquebot. But I did send some out from Nicaragua and I hope you do get them soon. The thing with posting the mail from the ship is that you hand over your mail to relative strangers and simply trust that it will reach the other end. Its a wonder any of those reach at all. :)

With this nice warm feeing in the air, I'll leave you with a set of X mas stamps released by the Chilean postal Dept. This is one cool santa. I'm still not sure what exactly he is doing with Rudolf "the red nosed deer", but it certainly can't be what I think he is doing!!

Curacoa - Dive

Location : Panama City Anchorage - 08 50 N, 079 29 W

I haven't been around for some days and the reason for that is that I am getting off the ship and this will be pretty much one of the last posts before I get back. Thanks to you all for the comments and the wishes.

Wanted to put up a stamp from the underwater. It is a rare stamp in the sense that even though many stamps are released featuring underwater scenes, rarely do we see divers being featured in them.

Hopefully will be able to get some diving done in Honduras before I get on the plane back home.

Neth Ant Cartoon

Location : Pacific , Nicaragua coast - 09 41 N, 086 22 W

We are reaching port in the morning and as things were a little tight, I was wondering if I'd let you good fellows do the talking. I picked up this cartoon strip in Curacao, & I wonder if any of you could figure out what it stands for? Is this a famous cartoon character in Netherland? Looks like a spider to me.

Chile - The Easter Islands

Location - Pacific, Equador Coast 00 24 S, 083 08 W

The Easter Islands, though seperated from the Clilean mailland by a huge distance, have become much of an icon for the country. The reasons of course is the presence of the statues on the Island. No one really knows who or why built these statues, but
the small wooden statues being made on the bottom right are made for money and sell for as much as 2 US dollars each on the road side.

Martin, a friend from Chile says that there are teo main types of statues - one with bigger ears then the others. He said that the statues were built by warring tribes who fought each other till everyone died and the only ones who were left behind were
the gods with no one to pray to them and some to buy them for two bucks.

PS: As you can see from the position, am crossing the equator again in a couple of hours!

Chile - Sea Lions

Location : Pacific, Peru Coast - 07 59 S, 080 49 W

Chile claims a sizeable chunk of the Antartic Continent as a part of its Territory. I am not really sure how this goes down internationally because as far as my understanding went, the whole of the Antartic was supposed to be an international territory.
Regardless, the Antartic does impose a potent influence on the whole country simply because of the cold water current that flows from it up the Chilean coast. This also brings along the visitors from down under such as Penguins and Sea lions.

I did see a bunch of these Sea Lions perched on a rock off Vina Del Mar. Picture on the regular blog.

A point of interest is that even though the Chilean currency is denoted as dollars, it is actually called "Peso". This stamp of 1500 Peso's costs approximately 3.5 dollars or 130 Indian Rupees. Sometimes I think India is the cheapest Philatelic
destination in the world.

Chile - Two Nudes

Location - Pacific, The Peru Coast - 11 01 S, 079 45 W

One of the good things about moving around a city during a bright sunny day is that you can always go into the post office. The post offices in Chile are called "Correos De Chile" and are very difficult to find, simply because they are hidden in
Shopping malls.

I did get some nice stamps and sheets there and I thought that I might as well start off with this beautiful painting by Henritte Petit. I put it up here because fine art always has fascinated me. The fact that there are naked chicks on the stamps had nothing to do with it. At all.

Fruits

Location - Chile Coast - 21 39 S, 075 57 W

Well its been a hectic past week and we were in chile for the day of the new year and a few days hence. It was a beautiful port stay and I'm just about getting over it now. Apologies for not coming by earlier and updating this with more posts.

Thanks for the wishes from you people and I have put in some mail from the port. Will make a post call tomorrow. In the meanwhile, thanks for checking in and the comments. Am putting up a set of stamps released by the Neth Ant, on fruits. I think its always good to start off something like the new year with food on your plate. :)