Indian Navy to induct Ajanta Cave painting inspired world's only 'stitched ship' today
NEW DELHI: A one-of-a-kind project to recreate a 5th-century stitched shipbased on an ancient painting from the Ajanta Caves has been successfully completed. No other such ship exists or is in service anywhere in the world today.
The Indian Navy announced on Tuesday that the ship will be officially inducted and named during a ceremonial event at the Naval Base in Karwar on Wednesday.
The Minister of Culture, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, will attend the ceremony as Chief Guest and formally induct the ship into the Indian Navy.
This stitched ship was inspired by a painting from the 5th-century CE found in the Ajanta Caves. The project began with a tripartite agreement signed in July 2023 between the Ministry of Culture, the Indian Navy, and Hodi Innovations, Goa. The Ministry of Culture provided funding.
The keel of the ship was laid on 12 September 2023. Construction followed traditional shipbuilding techniques using natural materials and was led by master shipwright Babu Sankaran, with skilled artisans from Kerala. Thousands of joints were hand-stitched using traditional rope and sealed with a mix of coconut fibre, resin, and fish oil methods once used in ancient Indian shipbuilding.
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Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
A Stitch Across Centuries To Sail Across The Sands Of Time
The Goa-made stitched ship, Kaundinya, inducted by the Navy refutes the colonial claim that Europeans taught the world to sail. The vessel demonstrates how India built seaworthy ships thousands of years ago. A 15-member Navy crew is expected to take the motorless vessel to Muscat, following age-old trading routes In one quiet corner of Goa's Divar island, chisels ring out like ritual gongs. The thick scent of fish oil hangs in the air — acrid and unmistakable — seeping into skin, cloth, and memory. Woodchips carpet the floor, mingling with the discarded strands of coir rope, and somewhere in the din, the low murmur of Malayalam swirls between bursts of drilling and the slap of waves beating against timber. In the middle of it all, Babu Sankaran works quietly. His hands, callused by decades of labour, move out of muscle memory — steady, precise, unhurried. He crouches low, chipping away at a wooden pulley he has carved earlier with his hands. Sankaran wears what looks like the same overalls he had for years — frayed at the edges. Once a deep blue, it is bleached by sweat and sun into something paler. Navy's antique armour On May 21, when the yacht was commissioned and inducted into the Indian Navy, Sankaran stood on the pier to take in the INSV Kaundinya. The 20-metre wooden yacht is stitched together like a suit of wooden armour, lashed with coconut husk rope soaked in fish oil and tree sap called kundroos. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like A stress-relief game that everyone around me is playing Elvenar - Play on Browser Learn More Undo There are no nails. No bolts. Just knowledge passed from father to son, from generation to generation, now mostly forgotten. But now, that legacy will sail from the brink of oblivion to the centre of the international seafaring spotlight. The ship has no modern trappings, no creature comforts, and certainly no engine. After all, this is no ordinary ship. It is the result of a 'completely crazy project' dreamed up by a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Sanjeev Sanyal. He was inspired by the painting of a 5th-century vessel painted onto the ancient rock walls of the Ajanta caves. Shipwrights and artisans use the 'I-X' pattern to stitch the planks together, similar to the cross-stitch technique in embroidery, where the 'I' represents a straight stitch and the 'X' represents a cross stitch India, a Sailing Guru A 15-member Navy crew will command the vessel — not with modern motors but under full cotton sails, aided only by winds and trailing oars, as it was done centuries ago. 'When we really attempt to sail it, we will have to really relearn the art of sailing the square, trailing oar, flexible hull ship, something that no living being knows how to do,' Sanyal said. 'This ship is a unique piece of equipment that we have not sailed before.' Indeed, the tradition defies time. Indian sailors have known for millennia how to read the monsoons and how to shape a hull that could rise with the tide and bend with the waves without breaking. 'We must challenge the narrative that Europeans taught the world to sail and travel,' said naval historian Commodore Srikant Kesnur (retd). 'This endeavour could be seen as the revival of cultural memories of India's maritime past. When the crew of this ship sails to various ports and nations, it will arouse curiosity and interest in the name of the ship, the unique form of the ship, and its link with civilisations of the past. ' Ancient ingenuity unsinkable 'This project is a resurrection of the past, a past that for the last 1,000 years was forgotten. It lived etched on coins, on paintings in caves… that ends now. We have India's own stitched ship,' said Prathmesh Dandekar, the managing director at Hodi Innovations, a shipyard at Divar. The Indian Navy and the Union ministry of culture jumped on board and roped in Hodi Innovations to turn the dream into a floating, ocean-going objective: retrace the maritime legacy of ancient Indian seafarers. 'If you see today, we don't have any written information about these kinds of boats. And unfortunately, we have not found any shipwrecks,' Dandekar said. 'So, the whole idea for us is to sail this ship on those ancient trade routes to showcase that back in the day, India could build seaworthy ships and was a big maritime power.' This vessel is expected to sail from Mandvi in Gujarat to Muscat in Oman, following the age-old trading routes that once ferried spices, ivory, cotton, and ideas across the Arabian Sea. Babu Sankaran, master craftsman of stitched ships, has been working on wooden ships for 45 years Rich travel history The art of stitching, with a rope and hands, kept the hull flexible — able to absorb the ocean's fury without splintering. In the ancient days, it allowed Indian ships to reach Arabia, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. That knowledge now rests in a handful of men like Sankaran — 61 years old, invisible in a crowd, his eyes trained to squint against the sun. 'At the age of 16, I went to Oman to work. I've been working on wooden ships for the past 45 years,' Sankaran said. 'There are others in my hometown of Vadakara in Calicut, but we are the last of this generation. This could well be the last ship I have stitched.' He runs his hand along the INSV Kaundinya as it lies moored at the Karwar naval base. Every knot is an act of remembrance of ancient techniques. Every pull of the coir rope is a tug — not just towards the ocean, but towards the past. Sankaran will soon fly to Abu Dhabi to work on another wooden dhow. 'They don't want a stitched ship. They will use nails,' he said. The INSV Kaundinya's voyage may be months away. But the journey has begun to reclaim old knowledge and to again value labour done by hand. The skill, once orally passed from father to son along the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, is now documented for posterity.
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
THE WOMAN WHO CLIMBED DARKNESS
Logo: Times Specials Kullu: On the morning of May 19, as dawn lit up the Himalayas, Chhonzin Angmo stood on the summit of Mount Everest. There was no sweeping panorama for her. No view. No photograph. Just a blur of wind, cold, breathlessness — and tears. "I couldn't see anything," Angmo said. "But I could feel it. I was standing on the top of the world. That moment was unbelievable." In that moment, the 29-year-old from Himachal Pradesh, India, became the first visually impaired woman ever to summit Everest, and only the fifth person in history without sight to reach the peak. She had made it. Not despite her blindness — but through it. From the valley to the void Angmo was born in Chango, a remote Himalayan village sitting almost 3,000 metres above sea level, on the edge of the Spiti valley. She had perfect vision as a child, playing in the apple orchards and walking to school like any other. But one day, at the age of eight, something changed. "It was during her school examinations," said her older brother, Gopal. "The teacher noticed her handwriting had started slanting on the page. She said she couldn't see." Within days, Angmo was blind. Her family travelled hundreds of kilometres to doctors in Rampur, then to Delhi, Chandigarh and Patiala — but the cause was never identified, and the treatments never worked. The young girl spent years at home in silence. But silence never suited her. "She had this fire," said Tashi Dolma, the village head of Chango and a former schoolmate. "She was never going to accept being left behind. " Learning to move forward Angmo was enrolled eventually in the Mahabodhi Residential School for the visually impaired in Leh, Ladakh — more than 1,000 km from home. There, she learned Braille. She graduated. Then she left the mountains for Delhi, where she studied at Miranda House, one of India's top colleges for women. There, the mountains called her back. And this time, she answered in a way no one expected. Angmo took up adventure sport. She paraglided in Bir-Billing. She bicycled from Manali to Khardung La. She swam, ran marathons, played judo, scaled the Siachen Glacier, and summited Kang Yatse II and Kanamo Peak. She worked her way up to 20,000-foot climbs — blind. "After I lost my eyesight, Everest became my obsession," she said. "People tried to scare me. They said I'd die. But every time they said it, I became more determined." The final ascent Mount Everest is more than a climb. For Indian climbers, a guided expedition can cost upwards of ₹50 lakh. For a blind woman from a remote village, it's nearly impossible. Angmo knocked on many doors. Eventually, her employer —Union Bank of India — agreed to sponsor her expedition. She left Delhi on April 6. After flying to Lukla, she trekked to Everest Base Camp by April 18. For the next 26 days, she trained and acclimatised under the guidance of military veteran Romil Barthwal and two Sherpa guides, Dundu Sherpa and Gurung Maila. On May 15, the summit push began. Her biggest fear? Not altitude. Not fatigue. Crevasses. "I was terrified of the ladders. I couldn't walk across them, so I sat on them and crawled across on my hands," she said. Between Base Camp and Camp 4, she relied on trekking poles and the subtle shifts in body movements of climbers ahead to navigate. At times, she memorised terrain from a previous trek to Base Camp a year earlier. On May 18, she reached Camp 4. That night, at 7 pm, the team made their summit push. Top of the world Above 8,000 m lies the Death Zone, where oxygen is scarce and each step can take a minute. Angmo moved slowly, focusing on her breathing, her footing, her purpose. "At that altitude, every step hurts. I just kept repeating in my head: I'm not doing this just for me. I'm doing it for everyone who's ever been told they can't." By 8.30 am the next morning, she was there — at 8,849 m. The world's highest point. She couldn't see it. But she knew. "The wind was fierce. My Sherpas were telling me about the peaks below. I couldn't hold back my tears." Back to reality, eyes still shut—but wide open Today, Angmo lives alone in Delhi. She takes the metro to work, cooks her own meals, visits friends. But her story is far from over. "Everest isn't the end. It's the beginning," she said. "Next, I want to climb the Seven Summits." Her story adds a new chapter to global mountaineering history — and a proud page to India's. Graphic Blind Faith, High Point: Scaling the Invisible box1 Chhonzin Angmo's Road to Summit >> April 6 | Departs Delhi >> April 10 | Begins Everest Base Camp trek from Lukla >> April 18 | Reaches base camp; starts 26-day acclimatisation >> May 15 | Reaches Camp 1 >> May 16-18 | Climbs through Camps 2 to 4 >> May 19, 8.30 am | Reaches the summit of Mount Everest box 2 The famous 5: Everest's Sightless Pioneers >> Erik Weihenmayer (US) | First blind person to summit Everest (2001); completed Seven Summits >> Andy Holzer (Austria) | Summited Everest in 2017 via Tibet >> Zhang Hong (China) | First blind Asian climber to summit (2021) >> Lonnie Bedwell (US) | Blind Navy veteran summited in 2023 >> Chhonzin Angmo (India) | First blind woman to summit Everest (2025) box3 No Legs, But What A Feat! Other Indian physically challenged mountaineers:- >> Arunima Sinha | Second amputee in the world to summit Everest (2013) >> Chitrasen Sahu | Double amputee (called Half Human Robo); climbed Mt Elbrus and Kilimanjaro >> Uday Kumar | Amputee climber; scaled Kilimanjaro and Mt Rhenock >> Tinkesh Kaushik | First triple amputee to reach Everest base camp box 4 "To climb Everest, you don't just need strength. You need a reason," Angmo said. She found hers in the dark. And she carried it all the way to the top of the world. MSID:: 121547482 413 |
Time of India
4 hours ago
- Time of India
These woods are lovely, dark and deep
Adyar Poonga With a green cover around 10%, Chennai stands almost at the bottom of the list of cities in India. However, the number of urban forests and community driven initiatives is slowly but steadily going up, Dr M S Swaminathan Wetland Eco Park in Porur being the latest. On environment action month, here's a lowdown on some of the best urban forests of Chennai. NANMANGALAM RESERVE FOREST HIGHLIGHT | Rare insectivorous plants It is spread over 274ha across Tambaram, Alandur and Velachery. Once destroyed by extensive mining, the area was taken over by the Tamil Nadu forest department in the 1960s and restored, planting trees and allowing natural regeneration. 'Three ponds and seven abandoned quarries now collect rainwater for cattle and wildlife,' says forest range officer C Vidyapathi. 'You can spot the rare Eurasian eagle owl here, the only place in South India where it can be seen. ' The Pallikkaranai marshland nearby has waterbodies that attract migratory birds. 'It's the only forest in Chennai where insectivorous plants such as Drosera indica and ground orchids occur naturally,' says Jayashree Vencatesan of Care Earth Trust, an organisation engaged in biodiversity conservation. Check dams and percolation ponds have raised the water table in nearby residential areas. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch CFD với công nghệ và tốc độ tốt hơn IC Markets Đăng ký Undo The forest also feeds three lakes. In 2019, 18ha of eucalyptus was cleared and replaced with native species, says Vidyapathi. 'Another 100 acres will be restored.' Status | Open; an ecopark is planned to promote forest conservation Entry | Permitted with forest department approval for birdwatching and nature walks KOTTURPURAM URBAN FOREST HIGHLIGHT | Community engagement This lush forest situated alongside the Adyar river next to the Kotturpuram bridge was once a massive waste dump. The public works department approached NGO Nizhal to help convert the 4.5 acres into an urban forest, and over 19 years, 1,000 trees and shrubs, including 250 varieties of indigenous species, were planted. 'There wasn't even a worm here, but now you can see Indian pitta, drongo, paradise flycatcher and congregations of flying foxes. A loyal group of volunteers help maintain the park,' says Shobha Menon, founder of Nizhal. The success of the Kotturpuram forest led to similar projects such as the Madhavaram Urban Forest in the Tanuvas area and Chitilapakkam Neer Vanam, both with more than 200 trees, and Thiruvanmiyur-Taramani Urban Forest on OMR, also built on a dump site. Status | Open Entry | Free: 6am-8am; 4pm 7pm GUINDY NATIONAL PARK HIGHLIGHT | Blackbucks Probably the only national park situated in a metropolitan area and where blackbuck, a Schedule-1 species, roam about undisturbed, the 270-acre patch of green is host to 350 plant species. 'We regularly remove invasive plants and plant indigenous grassland species for blackbuck,' says wildlife warden Manish Meena. 'Eucalyptus has also been replaced with native trees.' The park is so densely biodiverse with birds, mammals, reptiles, butterflies and insects that it has not been fully explored. The park has four types of ponds that fill during monsoons and recharge groundwater in nearby residential areas. 'But to protect flora and fauna, only educational and conservation tours are allowed in core areas with permission,' says Manish. Status | Open Entry | Allowed with the permission of the forest department ADYAR POONGA Highlight | Creek ecosystem The only urban forest in the city with a creek ecosystem, water spread was just 5% when restored in 2011 which has since increased 250%. The ongoing phase 2 facilitates more rainwater flow and includes mangrove planting. Over the years, second and third generation plantations have come up in the creek area, and the number of species has increased from 40 to 440. The recreational features that are part of the revamp, including a skywalk that 'leads nowhere' and the 5km concrete pathways have raised questions. But authorities say green cover will still occupy 75% of the area and visitor limits will remain at 100. Status | Closed for renovation WHAT CONSERVATIONISTS SAY: 'These are the only remnants of the original vegetation of Chennai. They can be equated to heritage sites and should be protected,' says Jayashree Vencatesan of Care Earth Trust. Urban areas need to help solve challenges such as water pollution, flooding and heat stress, says Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bengaluru. 'Opportunities for some recreational and educational services can be planned later, rather than orienting the urban forests towards recreation and manicured spaces without thinking of biodiversity and ground-water recharge. '
