Antarctica - the land of blue ice

Our next target was to go to the seaside . I was looking forward to walking as well as  riding the ice scooter on the frozen sea. During childhood when I started getting exposure to the English language I had heard the proverb “tip of the iceberg”. It actually took time for me to understand the phrase, but it had created curiosity in my mind about icebergs. Another exposure to the iceberg happened when I watched the movie Titanic. That time I had never imagined that I would be able to see them in real. Here in Antarctica, I got a chance to see them deep inside the sea and very close too. The icebergs are the fantastic  creations of nature. They have various shapes and sizes. Some of them are so large that their area could easily be many square kilometers. The largest iceberg on the record called 15A is over 11,000 square km which was 295 km x 37 km calved from the Ross Ice-shelf from Roosevelt Island in North - West Antarctica. This iceberg was la...

It indeed was an immense pleasure to meet old friends who were already there for more than a year. The happiness on their faces was something to experience than describe… The moment we entered the station there was an announcement in the PA system welcoming us. Bharati station has a different culture and it was visible everywhere. Right from our welcome with drum  beats  till this announcement, everything was different. Maitri was like visiting very close people in a small place, very affectionate and intimate  w hereas Bharati was more urban and modern . Both were good like two sides of the same coin as people at both these places were from the same background. The plush buildings with modern facilities cannot change the emotions and feelings. We were enjoying all these experiences with every passing moment at our home away from home , 3  months for me and over 14 months for my team. It was already evening and the dinner was ready. The parathas we ate ...

I was to fly the very next day to my final destination, the Indian Research Station Bharati, the last lap of my thrilling journey. This time it was with a team of engineers. In fact, I had travelled alone from Pune to Maitri station as I was delayed and could not be part of the team who went earlier. They had already reached Maitri and joined me to Bharati Station. My flight was scheduled for 5 AM Maitri time. The time from Maitri to NOVO is around 1 hr, so it was decided that we should leave at 3.30 AM. In Antarctic summer the day or night does not matter as it is bright Sun all the time. However there were different time zones as Capetown is 3.5 hrs, Maitri is 5.5 hrs and Bharati is just 30 mins behind IST.  In a span of 24 hours, I was witnessing 3 time zones and my body clock had already gone haywire and could get very little sleep. I was put up in the container based living module which was heated and had all the required facilities. But this was my first attempt to ...