Larsemann Hills- I: Guest Blog

Anant Pande was a member of the 28th Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica. He represented the Institute of Science, Mumbai. He is a marine biologist. He worked on Antarctic Krills, the staple food of nearly all animals living in the Antarctic Ocean. He is currently pursuing wildlife biology and Wildlife Institute of India. He can be contacted on http://www.indianwandererslife.blogspot.com/
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I went to Antarctica as a summer member in the third and the only team to go by ship. The team first went to the Larsemann area in East Antarctica (site for 3rd Indian Station) and then moved over to MAITRI.
We boarded our ship Emerald Sea on 4th of January, 2009 at Cape Town. The voyage was flagged off by Mr. Ajay Dhar, the Voyage Leader on 6th January with much halla gulla including the chanting of Bharat Mata ki jai from the Table Bay harbor, Cape Town port.

The Expedition Ship, Emerald Sea

The journey was fantastic and those like me who had been on a ship for the first time had the time of their life. We travelled for 11 days crossing all natural hurdles ( roaring forties, furious fifties and cold weather) and one fine morning of 17th January, woke up to see ourselves surrounded by pack ice in all directions. The ocean was painted white for miles around us and sun glared so hard that we could not look anywhere without shades. The scene was awesome and we were just 80 miles from the land of Antarctica.We went all around the ship and clicked happily making different poses.

Larsemann Hills as seen from the Ship

Next day the sorties were started off to BHARTI Island, the site for the 3rd Indian Station at Antarctica. We were divided into groups of four and sent to the island. Our group consisted of geologists (Mr Ashish Nath,GSI), meteorologists (Mr. Radheshyam, IMD, Saroj Sahu and Alok Gautam, IITM), Space physicists (Dr. Sandeep Oza & Deepak Maroo, SAC, Dr. Dabas, NPL and Jai Prakash Chaubey, SPL), Ice-core guys (Maha, Akshay, NCAOR), Environmentalists (Bhupesh Sharma and Manoj Kumar, SIIR & Roseline and Neelu, NCAOR), Palaeo-climatologists (Vartika, BSIP), Zoologists (Dr. Rajan, ZSI and me, ISc), Wildlife Biologists (Dr Sathyakumar and Dr Sivakumar, WII), Surveyors (KV Ramana Murty, Maheshwar Singh, Manjeet Singh and Vimal Kishore, SoI) and Logistics ( Devendra kumar, Devendra Sharma, Trinagu and Koli, BRO). There were others who were working both on ship as well as land like Hari and Sanjeeva Sharma (NHO) and one purely ship-based (Nuncio, NCAOR).

Melon Huts at Bharti

Apple Huts at Bharti