It's been a long time- India stamps today

I have had some things going on in my life that took up a lot of time, including elder care issues and job training that caused me to have to set my stamps aside for a while.

I am hoping to have some time to devote to them and to this blog. I apologize for neglecting this blog for so long. I will try to post here occasionally.

Today I am looking at what India stamps I have around. I printed out the album pages for the classic period of India from a disk I purchased a while ago from http://www.stampalbums.com/ which is one of my favorite Philatelic websites. You do have to subscribe, but if you are interested in putting your stamps in albums, or (like me) want to being able to print out pages to give to your children, other folks' children, etc., all in an extremely affordable format, check out their site now! Sorry to go off on a tangent here, but I can't say enough about this site, it has changed the face of philately. I am not paid to advertise for them nor do I know the site owner. I'm just a satisfied customer.

I have a small pile of classic India on my desk, starting with a Queen Victoria single star watermark 2 anna pale blue issue. According to the Stanley Gibbons catalog, this one comes in pale blue or in blue, but I think any used issues would be pretty difficult to discern whether they were faded or pale blue. But I am guessing mine is pale blue. At any rate, there is only one album space for it so I don't feel a need to distinguish. Most of my classic India is well used and not in top condition, but I still find them to be attractive stamps.



One of the things that is interesting about this series of Queen Victoria stamps is that, according to the Stanley Gibbons catalog, they are the first stamps issued after Queen Victoria declared herself the Empress of India.
What I wonder is did the Queen of England ever actually set foot in India? Does anyone know enough India history to be able to answer this? Or perhaps a Royal Family member serving in the British military?

~Suzi~