As we proceeded along the Russian barrier, we were welcomed by a few Adelie penguins. We had expected to find some Emperor penguins there. This was the only place close to Maitri where we could expect to see the emperor penguins. I strained myself attempting to locate the emperors. There were none in sight.
We parked our vehicles next to the Russian vehicle and started the decanting operations right away. We spotted a stray penguin close to our location. I set out after it to photograph it. But it ran away when it noticed me approaching. Initially it was waddling away on 2 legs, and then it began tobogganing on its belly. When a penguin slides on its belly, it can outrun the fastest man. It propels itself with its hind legs. Penguin footprints and belly prints were to be seen all over the place.
I spotted Sasha nearby and went to him. He told me that near the shelf there were a lot of penguins on a barrel dump. He had taken a half hour video clip there. He volunteered to take me to where the penguins were. We also took along Hukum Singh of the new team.
The penguin colony was quite filthy. It cannot be called a rookery because the Adelie penguins could not lay its eggs on ice. They need stones to make nests and lay eggs. There were about 50 Adelie penguins there. They were all stained with oil. The whole place was very noisy with the collective cry of the penguins. The cry of the penguins can be described as similar to that of a crow but in more rapid succession. One has to hear it to appreciate it. While crowing, they raise their necks high up in the air collectively. We attempted to go close to them expecting them to cower down with fright. But to our surprise, they fought back and attempted to attack us with their beaks. Their beaks were sharp enough to tear our flesh away. But they looked cute even in their anger, more so when they looked at us suspiciously out of the corner of their white rimmed eyes while we approached them. This was in sharp contrast to their behaviour when they are alone or in small groups when they run for their lives when they see humans approaching them. But in large groups, they fight back.
We noticed that the all the penguins had mates, and each pair was allotted a barrel. If anyone tried to encroach on another pair’s barrel, the other pair shooed them away. This sometimes used to lead to serious fights among the penguins. We were guilty of starting a few fights among the penguins. One penguin had dug a small pit in the snow and was collecting chunks of snow and depositing them in the pit. I felt that the penguin was probably about to lay eggs and was attempting to construct a nest. But Adelie penguins do not lay their eggs on snow. They need stones to construct their nests. They can travel 100 km to look for such places. This explains their presence at Schirmacher oasis.
There were many other penguins lolling around. I followed a solitary penguin wherever it went. It first went up the shelf, then along it, sometimes waddling, sometimes tobogganing. I kept a good distance from it so as not to disturb it. Finally it returned to the place from where it had started. It was such an anticlimax and a waste of time.
The fuel decanting continued the next day till afternoon. Thereafter we started back since the Russians were in a hurry to go back and we needed them to guide us back to the Indo- Russian junction. We followed them and reached the junction late at night. We camped there at night and completed the journey back the next day. Since the fuel was meant for the Novo runway, we dropped it off at the runway and reached the station at 9 PM on 16 Nov 08. Thus another memorable convoy came to a close.
Each convoy appears to be more or less similar. But at the same time each convoy had something totally new to offer. This is the reason I end up writing about each and every convoy. There is still a joint convoy with our new team left before we return home.
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