India's navy boasts aircraft carriers, submarines, warships and frontline vessels of steel as it spreads its maritime power worldwide.

But none of its vessels is as unusual as its newest addition that sets sail on its maiden Indian Ocean crossing on Monday -- a wooden stitched ship inspired by a fifth-century design, built not to dominate the seas but to remember how India once traversed them.

Steered by giant oars rather than a rudder, with two fixed square sails to catch seasonal monsoon winds, it heads westward on its first voyage across the seas, a 1,400-kilometre (870-mile) voyage to Oman's capital Muscat.

Named Kaundinya, after a legendary Indian mariner, its 20-metre (65-foot) long hull is sewn together with coconut coir rope rather than nailed.

"This voyage reconnects the past with the present," Vice Admiral Krishna Swaminathan said, sending the ship off from Porbandar, in India's western state of Gujarat, on an estimated two-week crossing.

"We are not........

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