Mauritius

Okay, here's a cover from a hard-to-get place: Mauritius! Before we go on, a little more on Mauritius's location to get an idea of how utterly remote it is (no offense to Mauritians and Mauritius lovers):

Mauritius is an island nation off the coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about 560 mi east of Madagascar. In addition to the island of Mauritius, the Republic of Mauritius includes the islands of St. Brandon, Rodrigues and the Agalega Islands. Mauritius is part of the Mascarene Islands, with the French island of Réunion 125 mi to the southwest and the island of Rodrigues 240 mi to the northeast.

I remember watching an episode of the Amazing Race (I forget which season) where they were made to visit Mauritius. Mauritius seemed like a very beautiful place judging from the show, and I hope to one day pay it a visit.

Moving on, there are five awesome stamps on this cover. The two on top are part of a series of 12 issued in 2000.

The stamps on this show the Vielle and the Ange.

The stamp under the Re 1 Vielle stamp, iaauws in 2007, commeorates the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Manilall Doctor. Doctor was an Indian-born, London educated lawyer and politician, who travelled to numerous countries of the British Empire, including Fiji, Mauritius and Aden, providing legal assistance to the local ethnic Indian population. He met Gandhi, who asked him to go to Mauritius and later informed him him of the need for a barrister in Fiji. In his attempt to help the down-trodden, he was frequently on a collision course with local authorities and was deported from Fiji and barred from practising law in several colonies.

Next to the Manilall Doctor stamp is a stamp of the Acropora Rodiguensis, which appears to be a type of coral (perhaps native to Mauritius?). This stamp was also issued in 2007.

The last stamp on the very bottom, also issued in 2007, features the Dodo Bird, which is infamous for its extinction:

The dodo was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall, weighing about 20 kilograms, living on fruit and nesting on the ground.

The dodo has been extinct since the mid-to-late 17th century.[1] It is commonly used as the archetype of an extinct species because its extinction occurred during recorded human history, and was directly attributable to human activity. The adjective phrase "as dead as a dodo" means undoubtedly and unquestionably dead. The phrase "to go the way of the dodo" means to become extinct or obsolete, to fall out of common usage or practice, or to become a thing of the past.

As with many animals evolving in isolation from significant predators, the dodo was entirely fearless of people, and this, in combination with its flightlessness, made it easy prey. However, journals are full of reports regarding the bad taste and tough meat of the dodo, while other local species such as the Red Rail were praised for their taste. It is commonly believed that the Malay sailors held the bird in high regard and killed them only to make head dressings used in religious ceremonies.[However, when humans first arrived on Mauritius, they also brought with them other animals that had not existed on the island before, including dogs, pigs, cats, rats, and Crab-eating Macaques, which plundered the dodo nests, while humans destroyed the forests where the birds made their homes; currently, the impact these animals – especially the pigs and macaques – had on the dodo population is considered to have been more severe than that of hunting.

The addressing of the envelope is rather curious as the addressee's address is written on the upper right corner, which is often where the sender's address is written. I have been accustomed to writing the addressee's address on the lower right or left of the envelope, but maybe they have different practices (or even regulations?) in Mauritius?

The stamps were tied on with a clearly legible postmark on 25 Mar 2008 at Sainte Croix, one of the smaller islands.