Indian Expedition to South Pole
One hundred years ago, on
December 14 1911 a Norwegian explorer Amundsen and his team achieved a
historical feat by becoming the first humans to set foot on the formidable
South Pole. After about a month Robert Scott the famous British explorer also
made it to the dreaded Pole, after having failed in his earlier attempts from 1901 to 1909. But tragedy struck Scott and his four companions during their return
journey. They perished after getting trapped in a fearsome blizzard. This
typical Antarctica phenomenon strikes without warning and is so blinding that
even objects at a distance of three feet become invisible. Unlike any other
storm, a severe blizzard may last for a week at a time with winds blasting at
over 100 miles per hour. Antarctica is the coldest, highest, windiest, driest
and iciest continent on earth. South Pole is a table top at a height of 2500 M
on this icy continent of Antarctica. The continent remains dark, without
sunlight for almost six months from March onwards and the lowest recorded
temperature on South Pole is – 82.8 deg C. With absolutely no vegetation and
life in addition to such a severe climatic condition make South Pole the most
difficult land mass on earth for even the bravest humans to dare. Amundsen
journeyed through Axel Heiberg Glacier to reach the polar plateau and
ultimately to the South Pole. They used skis and sledge dogs to accomplish
their feat. Scott, on the other hand used motorized sledge.
November 2010, to celebrate the
hundredth anniversary year of the polar conquest, seven young army men led by
veteran mountaineer Col.Swarup set out to put India on South Pole. The unique
feat in this expedition was that the team covered over thousand kilometer of
the treacherous icy landmass by manually pulling their sledges, without taking
help of sledge dogs or using motorized sledge. Perhaps this brave
achievement would have gone into oblivion if it did not get covered by media.
Almost a month after the team’s return to India, their heroic travails on a treacherous
landmass was vividly recounted in ‘The Journey to the End of the world’ authored
by Rudraneil Sengupta and published in the Mint of March 18 2011. One month
later another interesting article entitled ‘Our polestars' authored by Gopalkrishna
Gandhi, former Governor of West Bengal and a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi
appeared in the Hindustan Times of April 24 2011 .The links to both these articles
are provided here for all those who are fond of travel and adventure.
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| satellite view of the icy continent Antarctica |
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| Antarctica |
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| Penguins at the coastline of Antarctica |
found it very interesting
biswajit sengupta saw two of these very interesting stories on south pole and thought you might be interested to view :
Journey to the end of the world
By Rudraneil Sengupta
An Indian Army team recently became the first group from the country to complete a 1,170km ski-trek to the South Pole. Here's what it was like
Click here to view full story
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Our pole stars
By Gopalkrishna Gandhi
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January 21 at 10:49pm · --sumita sen