The Indian Navy’s wooden sailing ship, the Kaundinya, sailed the Arabian Sea in 17 days, departing from the Indian port of Porbandar on December 29.
📍This route was chosen for a reason: for centuries, this ancient sea route connected India with the Middle East and beyond to the rest of the world.
The ship has no engine, and it was designed without metal structures or modern tricks. This is how ancient Indian Ocean vessels navigated the seas: under square sails, relying on the wind and the skill of the crew.
The Kaundinya was hand-built using a nearly lost technology. The wooden planks of the hull are not held together with nails, but sewn together with coconut fiber ropes and sealed with natural resin.
This is how ships were built centuries ago, from India to East Africa. It was these vessels that made maritime trade possible long before maps and compasses in their usual form.
🖼 It’s surprising that the engineers had neither blueprints nor instructions. The ship’s shape was reconstructed from fragments: iconography, texts, and a depiction of an ancient vessel from the 5th century on the walls of the Ajanta Cave are one of the rarest visual traces of early Indian navigation.
✈️ The voyage proved harsh for the sailors: there were no familiar sleeping areas, heat and rain alternated, and the crew suffered from seasickness. But this is precisely what made the voyage a true journey through time.
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