Next morning, I was woken up by calls for morning tea at around 6:30 AM. There was a good wind and a snow drift going on. There were speculations that work would not be possible. But the wind subsided soon. Our job was to load the containers on the trailers that we were tugging from Maitri, decant the fuel into the fuel containers that we were to carry back, and finally, if possible, to repair the pisten bully that was lying on the shelf in a state of disrepair. The last job was unlikely to be accomplished in this convoy as it was a very low priority job. We had a hearty breakfast of poori subzi left over from the previous day. And it was work time by 8. Except for Mariappan, everyone left for work. I was lost as to what to do since I was not trained to do the kind of work the logistics staff was doing. I could only help them with physical labour and I did that whenever required. Whenever I felt out of work, I picked up my camera and explored the place. There was not much to explore though. There were a lot of containers lying around, half covered with snow. The wind had blown away the snow from the immediate vicinity of the containers. It had created a kind of a moat. The base was on blue ice. On the leeward side of the containers, a lot more snow had accumulated, almost till the top of the containers. One could simply walk to the top of the containers. The containers were lying all over the place, very far from each other. The reason for that was that the closer they are, the more the obstacle for the wind to deposit the snow during the blizzard and more the work that would need to be done to clear the snow. The fuel tankers were lying separately. There was one refugee hut also present there. That was meant for the summer team, so that when they are conducting experiments on the shelf and if a spell of bad weather suddenly strikes and they cannot be evacuated for sometime, they can have some place to seek refuge. The hut was very well equipped with beds and lot of eatables. There was a separate generator for the cabin also present. The dysfunctional pisten bully- Sutlej was lying near the cabin. It was half covered with snow. Snow had also filled up the cabin of the pisten bully. There were 3 cranes lying around as well. They were to be used to lift the containers and place them on the trailers. Apart from these, there was nothing to explore because there was nothing but a vast expanse of snow all around. In the distance, where the sky was clear, the rays of the sun were falling on the snow, giving it a beautiful orange glow. We were just about half a kilometre away from the sea. We could see the edge of the shelf from our location. The ocean should have frozen over by now or so we thought. There was no time to explore that. I was soon asked to replace Mariappan in the Banjara to keep a watch there for any malfunctions so that Mariappan could participate in the logistics operations. That meant that the day was over for me and I could put up my feet and relax. It was one in the afternoon and the sun was about to set. Most of the containers had been loaded by now. The major task now was to decant the fuel. An empty fuel container was loaded on the trailer and 2 generators put to work to speed up the decanting. But there were teething problems. The team was finally free by 5 in the evening. Now the plan for the next day was to try to repair Sutlej, refuel the vehicles, strap an excavator on a trailer and leave for Maitri.
In the evening, everyone was in a relaxed mood. It was Krishnamoorthy’s birthday today- 5 may 08. So there was a celebration. Prawns were fried. Ready to eat chicken biryani was prepared, namkeens were opened and most importantly, there were drinks. Later, there was a movie as well. Lakshya was running house- full that day. We finally dozed off at 10 PM. The next day began similar to the first day. But today it was an absolutely windless day. Since it was cloudy, it was not going to be as cold as it usually is. The last time the convoy was here, the temperatures were in the region of -30 deg C. Now they were around -12. Soon it started to snow as well. That was very light. Strapping of the excavator was over soon. Repairing and the final touches were taking time. I went to the edge of the ice shelf along with Gaffar. The moorings where our ship had moored in the summers were still intact. The sea had frozen over totally, except immediately along the shelf, where the layer of ice was very thin. There were a lot of snow petrels around. They usually migrate by this time.
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