India’s navy is known for its steel giants — aircraft carriers, submarines, and state-of-the-art warships projecting maritime power across the world’s oceans. Yet none of its vessels has drawn as much fascination as its newest and most unusual addition: a wooden ship stitched together with rope, inspired by a design dating back more than 1,500 years.
On Monday, the Indian Navy’s historic vessel, Kaundinya, set sail on its maiden Indian Ocean voyage, embarking on a 1,400-kilometre (870-mile) journey from India’s western coast to Muscat, the capital of Oman. Unlike modern ships, Kaundinya is steered by massive oars instead of a rudder and powered by two fixed square sails designed to harness the seasonal monsoon winds.
Named after a legendary Indian mariner, the 20-metre (65-foot) vessel is built entirely using ancient shipbuilding techniques. Its wooden hull is sewn together with coconut coir rope rather than fastened with nails — a method once common among Indian Ocean traders.
“This voyage reconnects the past with the present,” Vice Admiral Krishna Swaminathan said as he flagged off the ship from Porbandar in Gujarat State. “We are retracing ancient routes of trade, navigation, and cultural exchange, while reaffirming India’s historic role as a natural maritime bridge across the Indian Ocean.”
The journey evokes an era when Indian sailors traded extensively with the Roman Empire, the Middle East, Africa, and lands stretching eastward to present-day Thailand, Indonesia, China, and even Japan.
“This is not merely symbolic,” Swaminathan added. “It carries deep strategic and cultural meaning as India seeks to revive and rediscover its ancient maritime knowledge and capabilities.”
A Maritime Bridge
Before turning westward toward Oman, the Kaundinya’s 18-member crew had already sailed north along India’s palm-lined coastline, navigating from Karnataka to Gujarat.
“Our peoples have never seen the Indian Ocean as a barrier, but as a bridge,” said Oman’s ambassador to India, Issa Saleh Alshibani. “For centuries, these waters carried commerce, culture, and friendship between our shores. The monsoon winds that once guided ships between our ports also carried a shared belief that prosperity thrives through openness and cooperation.”
The voyage, however, is anything but easy. The ship’s builders deliberately rejected modern shortcuts, relying instead on traditional craftsmanship and historical accuracy.
“Life on board is very basic — there are no cabins, just the open deck,” said crew member Sanjeev Sanyal, the historian who conceived the project and an economic adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “We sleep in hammocks slung from the mast.”
An Oxford-educated scholar and former international banker, Sanyal worked with traditional shipwrights to design the vessel, drawing inspiration from ancient texts, paintings, sculptures, and coins.
“Vasco da Gama came here 500 years ago,” he said, referring to the Portuguese explorer who reached India in 1498. “What we’re recreating is history that is 6,000 to 7,000 years old.”
Reclaiming an Ancient Legacy
Beyond heritage, the voyage carries geopolitical and cultural significance. India is a member of the Quad security alliance alongside the United States, Australia, and Japan — a grouping often viewed as a counterweight to China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean.
For India, the Kaundinya also serves as a soft-power statement, challenging the notion that ancient East–West trade was dominated solely by China’s overland “Silk Road.” Those caravan routes, famously chronicled by 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo, peaked centuries after India’s maritime trade networks flourished.
“India was running such massive trade surpluses with the Roman Empire that Pliny the Elder complained Rome was losing too much gold to India,” Sanyal noted.
The ship carries only minimal modern equipment — a small battery powers a radio transponder and navigation lights, essential because wooden vessels do not easily appear on radar.
“When a big wave hits, you can actually see the hull flex inward slightly,” Sanyal explained. “That’s the genius of the stitched design — it bends rather than breaks.”
“But understanding that in theory is one thing,” he added. “Building it, sailing it, and putting yourself on board — that’s having real skin in the game.”
As Kaundinya glides across the Indian Ocean, propelled by wind, rope, and ancient knowledge, it carries with it a powerful message: that India’s maritime story did not begin with steel and engines, but with sails, monsoon winds, and oceans that once connected the world.
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