Manan’s Stamps

Every stamp here once stuck to an envelope that crossed seas and borders to get to someone. This is Manan’s collection, started when he was a boy. Ami has sorted it, page by page, into the scrapbook below.

Flip through it the way you’d flip through an old album on a lazy Sunday. Drag a page corner or use the arrow keys. Stamps with a small marker have a story behind them, so tap one to read it.

01How it started

Back then, the postman’s knock was the most exciting sound in the house. Manan would wait for the letters, and the stamps mattered more to him than whatever was written inside. He peeled them off, soaked them, and pressed them flat between the pages of heavy books.

Over the years the shoebox kept filling: commemoratives, definitives, faded postmarks, and the odd country he had to look up in an atlas. It turned out to be our first map of the world, long before either of us had a passport.

02The curator

A collection is just a box of paper until somebody gives it a story. Ami took a lifetime of loose stamps and made them into a scrapbook. She grouped them, gave each page a theme, and added notes to the ones that deserved them.

She decides what goes on each page, what sits next to what, and which stamps get a story. Manan collects them and Ami gives them a place.

03Why it lives on a travel blog

Before we started travelling, these stamps were how we saw the world: mountains, monarchs, festivals, birds, ships and stadiums, all printed smaller than a fingernail. Now and then a trip takes us to a country we first met on one of these stamps, and we can’t resist a glance back at the album.

04Got a stamp with a story?

If an old letter from your grandparents is lying in a drawer, or you’ve spotted a stamp in our album that came from your hometown, we’d love to hear about it. Every collection began with somebody else’s envelope.

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