GRENOBLE, France — A bag of Indian diplomatic mail is set to be delivered more than 46 years late after it was found on Mont Blanc in the French Alps, close to where an Air India plane crashed in January 1966.



The jute bag, stamped “Diplomatic mail” and “Ministry of External Affairs”, was recovered by mountain rescue worker Arnaud Christmann and his neighbor Jules Berger on Aug. 21. “Some tourists came and told us they had seen something shining on the Bossons glacier,” so he and his neighbor decided to go have a look, Christmann told AFP on Wednesday. “We found pieces of the cabin, a shoe, cables — it’s a real dump up there!” The two men also came across a plane wheel and, 20 meters further on, the diplomatic bag that was “sitting as if someone had just placed it there.”



“We were hoping for diamonds or at least a few gold ingots. Instead we got some soaking wet mail and Indian newspapers,” Christmann quipped. “It’s not the sort of thing you find very often in the mountains — the mail’s going to arrive 46 years late.” — AFP