The Antarctica experience so far - II

The choppers began their sorties soon after, ferrying men and material to and from the Indian Antarctic Station, Maitri. The summer team was shifted first to enable them to begin their work early. Then it was time for me to leave for Maitri. That chopper ride was an awesome experience. I had my video camera ready. The chopper took off and was flying over the fast ice. Then it reached the ice shelf. It was an awesome amount of ice. All around the chopper was just ice. It was broken by shades of blue, which was the melting ice. We could see some crevasses and streams down below. Some small lakes had also formed in places. But these were just temporary. The landscape was absolutely featureless. If one were dropped off in that place, one would not be able to tell one direction from the other, something similar to a desert. It was all level ice. Then I saw some hills in the distance. They were the Schirmacher Hills, the region where Maitri is located. It was an oasis of exposed land in the icy wilderness of Antarctica. Hence, it is also called Schirmacher Oasis. This was all rocky, brown terrain, interspersed with numerous glacier fed lakes. Then I saw my home for the next one year- Maitri. It resembled a small village built around the Priyadarshani Lake, also known as Zob Lake. We landed on a dusty area on which a small helipad was constructed. The station was at time bustling with energy. There were around 80 people there at that time- old and new winter teams and the summer team. The young scientists from the summer team were working overtime to finish their projects well in time and also taking time out to explore the region as much as they could. The old winter team was biding its time, desperate to get home, and the new team was full of trepidation about the long winter ahead.
The summer team and the old winter team have since left in mid Feb, coincidently on the same day. Our wintering has begun and we are settling down and preparing for the winters. The temperatures are dipping fast, the lakes have frozen, the weekly flights from Cape Town have stopped, the tourists have all left, the skuas- the eagle like birds found in these parts have left for their winter abodes in the sub Antarctic islands, the days are shortening and the nights are lengthening, and it is getting windier days by day. Soon it will be total darkness for a period of 2 months. There is still one and a half months for that. We have to run convoys to the ice shelf, a 100km away to fetch our winter stocks before the polar night sets in. Time is short and we all have our individual goals to achieve before the next summer team starts arriving in November.