The second convoy started on 4th May. We woke up at 2:30 AM and the convoy left after pooja at 4 AM. The rest of the expedition members were awake all night preparing food for the convoy team. We were well stocked up with food for the whole day. It was still dark. Gaffar was driving the pisten bully named Cauvery. I was the co- driver. Ours was the last vehicle in the convoy. The convoy meandered slowly out of Schirmacher. It was raising a lot of dust. I had never known Schirmacher to be so dusty. We were tugging an empty trailer with us. I could not make out our location as it was dark. We were just following the route marked out on the ground. After a bumpy ride, we reached Sankalp at around 5 AM. I could not recognise the place at night. This was the first time I was out of the station in the dark. Except for the lights of the convoy, there was total darkness all around. There was not even that “faint light seen in the distance” we are used to seeing in India. The convoy then moved on after hitching the Banjara living module & Jeevan Jyoti generator. Food packets were also distributed here. The day slowly started breaking. We crossed some Nunataks (mountain peaks jutting out of the glacier) on the way, including the one that marked the site of the Novo runway. From the Russian junction (where the Russian convoy route merged with ours) we began our descent to the ice shelf, leaving the last of the nunataks behind. From the ice shelf, we could see the Schirmacher Oasis. It appeared very close to us though we were 6 hours away from it. Now I got a better idea about the geography of Schirmacher oasis with respect to the rest of Antarctica. Most of Antarctica was like we were seeing it now- absolutely featureless and plane. There were no hills, trees, rocks, boulders- nothing at all. All that could be seen all around was a vast, endless icy landscape. It was truly fascinating. On the ice shelf the thickness of the ice is only a few hundred metres. But on the Antarctica plateau, the height can go above 4000 metres. The ground was an uneven layer of ice. It was uneven because during summers, the ice melts and then refreezes. Gaffar told me that there were streams flowing here in November. During the winters, due to blizzards, the gaps in the ice get filled up and the surface becomes smooth. Due to less intensity of blizzards this year, that did not happen, although the route had improved somewhat since the first convoy. We crossed a few lakes on the way. It is not easy to differentiate them from the blue ice. Now it does not matter since everything is frozen and we can drive over them without any problem, but during the summers, they can be dangerous, since one can drive into the lake without realising it since the colour is the same. The lakes can be differentiated from a chopper very easily. The ice on the ice shelf is called blue ice, due to the colour. It is extremely hard and does not break even under the weight of the pisten bully. This ice is extremely slippery and one cannot walk on it using trekking shoes. Snow boots are absolutely essential. Schirmacher Oasis is a region of very low hills that lay between the ice shelf and the mountainous region to the south of the shelf. The glacier had receded somewhat to uncover it. It was like a nunatak but in the shelf area. There was no other landmark for miles around as far as the eye could see that was similar to Schirmacher.
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