when I was working in Philatelic Bureau, Sri Lank I heard some countries in Europe organized special tours to the locations that depicted on the stamps and given amazing experience and knowledge about those places 

Surprisingly what I heard has become a reality with FantAsia Tours. They have planned their tour programmes (itineraries) enabling travelers to explore locations, monuments, and activities featured on Sri Lanka postage stamps and provide experts knowledge as and when necessary.

Some stamps depicting tourist hotspots in Sri Lanka

The Postage stamp, a small piece of paper with the prime objective of paying fees for delivering letters and related postal articles, has a secondary purpose beyond that. It has been used to pay tribute to places, people, things, events and activities of a country that are part of their history, culture and nature. Stamps are considered as a remarkable art of intricate illustration or stunning picture with historical value.

Postage Stamps, the borderless promoter of tourism in a country have a sentimental value for stamp collectors. Stamp collecting remains as one of the common and most popular hobbies even in a technologically advanced world today.

Stamp collectors always like to travel to different parts of the world to witness themselves the places, things, events and activities which they have seen in their collection of stamps. I saw a lot of foreign tourists visited Philatelic Bureau, Sri Lanka to purchase stamps and related collectables for their collection. Some of them are traveled to Sri Lanka once in two or three years’ time to have a holiday in Sri Lanka and purchased stamps from the Philatelic Bureau as per their interest.

One such collector who came here from Netherland every two years had an interesting stamp collecting habit. He only collects stamps featuring elephants. If an elephant image featured as part of a logo, emblem or signage on the stamp he collected that stamp. In philatelic terms, he is a thematic stamp collector. He had thousands of stamps featuring elephants issued by various countries in different parts of the world.

According to him, he has traveled to all most all the countries having elephants in the world. When he travels to a particular country he carries the elephant stamps issued by that country and try to explore the exact location which was featured in the stamp.

I was really curious about his connection with elephants. 

I asked him why you are so much interested in elephants? 

“They are intelligent and have a deep social bond”; he replied. 

The elephant families are similar to human, they look after their little ones (calf) very carefully, they make collective decisions and reconcile after conflicts; they communicate with each other by both nonverbal and calling: he added further.

According to my stamp collecting elephant lover from Netherland, Mr Brong did not have much knowledge and interest about elephants when he first visited Sri Lanka in the late 1980s for a holiday. During that period, he collected postage stamps on wildlife. 

He went to Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage during his holiday and got the opportunity to feed a little baby elephant. That baby elephant was so cute and he felled in love with elephants. Then he started research on elephants and later shifted his stamp collecting theme from wildlife to elephants. He visited all the places that he can find elephants in Sri Lanka.