Chennai girl's Antarctica sojourn

Chennai: ‘Of questionable sanity’ is how a certificate of merit describes 25-year-old Shaivya Rathore, acknowledging her courage after she took a plunge into the icy Antarctican waters.

The Chennai girl, who admits to not knowing swimming and for whom snow, iceberg, whales, seals and penguins were the sort of things seen only on television before, was the only one from Tamil Nadu among 139 other participants from 30 countries, including seven Indians, to go on an expedition to Antarctica led by none other than Robert Swan, the first person to walk to both North and South poles.

Recounting her once-in-a-lifetime experience to Deccan Chronicle, Shaivya, who is an aeronautical engineer by profession but is currently on a fellowship with Teach for India, said that the Herculean task for her, once her application was accepted, was to figure out a way to come up with the 10,000 US dollars expedition fee.

“Crowd sourcing helped as I created a page on the website wishberry.in. I was able to raise Rs 4.08 lakh and the remaining amount I managed through sponsorships,” said Shaivya.

A long distance flight to Ushuaia, via Dubai and Buenos Aires, commonly known as the southernmost city in the world, was up next. After an induction ceremony, the team, led by Swan, left the Port of Ushuaia on March 13.

It required two-and-a-half days to enter Antarctican territory but shipping on the rough seas got the better out of even seasoned travellers. “Thankfully, I did not get seasick,” she smiled.

The expedition is part of Swan’s 2041 foundation’s leadership programme to increase awareness about Antarctic conservation and the participants on board the Ocean Endeavour (the ship) were all professionals in high positions across different lines of work.

The trip involved seven days of trek into the Antarctican peninsula and on seven different islands. “We spent three hours trekking on each island and after would take a ride into the waters on a small boat. I got to see humpback whales,” she said.

Above all, it was the inspiration brought on board by the legendary Swan which bowled her over. “Listening to him talk, one cannot help but wonder at how he managed to pull off the feat (off walking to the poles),” she said. But the admiration was mutual, according to Shaivya.

In fact, so impressed was Swan by her ambition, she is setting up an educational society in Uttarakhand for the benefit of tribes, hilly area settlers and their children, that he offered to come to India to inaugurate the facility and set up an eco-energy project in the campus.

Ask her what the expedition taught her and she is quick to add “that we will not have a habitat to live if Antarctica melts,” and unfortunately, “it is melting.”

“The crew pointed out to an iceberg, which was once the size of the United States, that broke away in 2012. I noticed how only few floating bits of the iceberg remained on the Antarctic waters today,” she said.