Rainbow Stamp Club: New Stamps from India

Hi Readers ! The Olympic Games have started after the glittering opening ceremony at Beijing on 8th August. In today's post the stamps issued by India on Beijing Olympic 2008. It includes four stamps and a beautiful M/s. Some new information for readers about the Aldabra Giant Tortoise sent by a senior officer of Indian Postal Service Shri Niraj Kumar Sinha. Our sincere thanks to Mr. Niraj Kumar Sinha, Mr. Vinod Kumar Sabharwal, Mr. Vijay Seth and Mr. Shrikant Parikh for their contribution to this post. In the last part some beautiful se-tenants from the album of Mr. Shrikant Parikh. Enjoy the post and Have a Great Time !....

Recent Indian Issues on Beijing Olympics 2008

Date of Issue - 8 August 2008

The Aldabra Giant Tortoise (Geochelone gigantea), from the islands of the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles, is one of the largest tortoises in the world.Its carapace averages 120 cm in length and is a dark blue or black color with a high domed shape. It has stocky, heavily scaled legs to support its heavy body. The neck of the Aldabra Giant Tortoise is very long, even for its great size, which helps it to exploit tree branches up to a meter from the ground as a food source. The size of the Aldabra Giant Tortoise can be upto 4 ft. in length and weight can be about 550 lbs. Large tortoises are among the longest-lived animals on the planet. Some individual Aldabra Giant Tortoises are thought to be over 100 years of age.

How Aldabra Giant Tortoise appeared on stamps ?
- Niraj Kumar Sinha

I wish to throw some light on how the stamp on the Aldabra Giant Tortoise came about.We all remember a news article came in papers about the death of Adwaita, the giant turtle of Kolkata zoo. It was decided to issue a stamp on this longest living animal specimen on earth. Even in the plant kingdom very few species survive this much or longer. Despite having a traditional machinery, we decided to have hexagonal stamps, a first in India and perhaps one of the very few in the world. The idea was to draw a resemblance with the markings on its carapace. As you see in the information brochure, the tortoise was brought to India in the time of Clive.India Security Press did a courageous job of carrying out perforations in such a manner that stamp could not only get a hexagonal shape,in a sheetlet upto two star shaped stamps could also be easily taken out.This was achieved on traditional linear perforation machinery by doing some simple geometric drawings in the philately division of the department.It is a beautiful stamp and one is almopst moved to see this ancient relic who was alive only two years ago, proudly looking up.