Mongolian cosmonauts in space

This week marks the first year blogoversary of "I heart post"! Who knew that stamps could keep me entertained and propel a blog for a whole year?! In my second post on the blog, where I was really testing out the concept, I wrote about some stamps I bought in Mongolia as souvenirs during a trip back in 2004.

Well, this week we have come full circle, and I am returning to the country where I started, with space stamps from Mongolia.

The above stamps feature the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who was the first person to travel into space. Mongolia was the first former communist country I had ever visited, and I loved it. I chose quite a few space themed stamps as souvenirs, because I felt they had a real "soviet feel" about them.

In 1981 a Mongolian aerospace engineer/cosmonaut, J. Gürragchaa (Ж. Гүррагчаа),  went into space on March 22 1981, with the Soviet Interkosmos space program. He is a national hero, and the following stamp celebrates his journey into space (he is the dude on the right):

Gürragchaa spent 7 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes in space and docked with Salyut 6, a Soviet orbital space station. I also have another set of stamps with the symbol for the Interkosmos program on them, which also seem to celebrate Gürragchaa's mission. The stamps feature images of Mongolian and Russian co-operation, with the flags of both nations featuring on the stamps.

I love my Mongolian space stamps - I think they make a pretty gorgeous little collection.  I also love the look of the cyrillic alphabet, and I love the word 'cosmonaut'... so really there is a lot to love in these stamps.

I hope you have enjoyed this entry into Viridian's Sunday Stamps, and check out the link below for some more space stamps.

Back in the USSR

Check out these treasures from the USSR I found amongst the stamps in the little album I bought home from Indonesia recently. I didn't mean to acquire Russian stamps as souvenirs from my trip to Indonesia, but there you go. It just happened.

But aren't they just lovely? Isn't the typography wonderful? Don't the colours make your heart sing?

I went to Russia back in 2006. It was amazing. I didn't buy any post though. Don't know what I was thinking. I did, however, take great delight when signing my postcards with "From Russia With Love"! So not all was lost on the postal front. But now I have my very own soviet birds from 1962 within my collection. I don't think I could have found nicer stamps if I had tried!