Strange seeing myself on TV! Really amazing to receive encouragement from legendary explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes as well! It has been a long time since last met with him and he has always provided amazing support and advice!
Category: General
South Pole 2022 confirmed..!
Once I finished the Greenland crossing and managed to access my emails once again, I was greeted by the excellent news that Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions (ALE) had approved my plans for a solo journey from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole! Extremely happy and excited to get the news. I expect to fly to Antarctica on 10 November 2022, and hope to take between 45-50 days for the journey. Lots of work to do beforehand of course – plenty of training and lots of organising with the logistics… going to be a busy few months!!!
South Pole 2022??
So next year… finally… the Greenland expedition will go ahead, barring any deterioration in the COVID-19 situation and fingers crossed, vaccinations rates will keep going up. It’s all scheduled in the calendar – starting 24 April 2022 until around 25 May. A long journey across the ice cap, but seriously exciting to think it’s going to happen. Just need to get back into proper training!
Even more exciting is the prospect that I might be able to undertake a South Pole expedition at the end of 2022. I was hoping that there was a possibility of sponsorship and to go in a group of four with some friends in India and Brazil, though am not counting on this happening, the way things are going at the moment with the economies in South Asia and LatAm.
BUT…
I have been lucky enough to be able to start putting some savings together and getting some decent freelance work since I left my full-time job in January. And I would say that the chances of being able to self-finance a solo expedition for November 2022 are extremely good!! It is so exciting, just thinking about it!
Question is… do I choose fiscal responsibility (for once in my life) and looking to put a deposit on the house? Which might setback any South Pole plans by a year or two… or…. Go all in? Considering am not getting any younger… House…? Pole…..? Hummmm! Not really a question is it?
The idea of the South Pole… the whole expedition… 50-60 days across those 1,700km in such an endurance test to get from the coast to the Pole… Antarctica! (You remember that Friends episode when Joey is in London? “Antarctica, baby!!” Just need the hat!) it’s just too much of a dream; what have been preparing for for the last goodness knows how many years, and I think it’s fair to say my friends and family think I am obsessed. They’re right. I can’t let this slip out of my hands… so, fingers crossed, the work keeps coming in–that’s the problem with freelancing it, one never really knows… it could all just drop off tomorrow–and will be able to manage it.
What a year!
So, it’s been a long while since have written anything, though as with pretty much everyone, the plans from the last year or so have been massively affected by everything that has been happening in the world. The planned Greenland expedition got put off from 2020… with the hope to manage in May 2021, though for obvious reasons with the continued pandemic and vaccination just starting to get going, the journey is now planned for May 2022. Fingers crossed it will happen!
With the pandemic and the current apocalypse as a global backdrop, in March 2020, I fell sick with pneumonia, which meant that March was a complete write-off as I was hospitalised and unable to do any training for a while. I think that even had there been no pandemic and subsequent restrictions (though they did not test me for COVID as it was at the time when testing was severely limited), I wouldn’t have been able to manage the journey in May 2020 as it took me a long time for to get back on my feet again.
To cut a long story short though, I am now back living in the UK and managing to sort out training within the confines of the lockdowns. Think that being over here will make the training easier to manage to be honest, especially once the restrictions ease, so I think the year ahead will be quite exciting. Already just being able to go out for daily hikes and runs (and continuing with the pilates!) is a huge difference from the New Delhi, where the smog and the heat could be overwhelming!
Also there might be news on a future South Pole expedition, but that’s still in the works… but here’s hoping!
Welcome to my blog!
Thanks for visiting this site! Over the next few weeks and months I will be updating it with news about my training for the forthcoming Greenland Expedition (and training in New Delhi where we are already getting temperatures in the 20s, when Greenland will be -30C or so… isn’t the easiest thing to think about!), and other adventure-related news. If you yourself are planning any adventures, I would love to hear from you! I always love chatting about such journeys, and if I can help you in anyway with your preparation, I would be delighted!
I hope you find it interesting and that you can follow me – of course, if you are able to donate to Cancer Research to support my cause of raising funds for them, that would be wonderful! But if not, no worries – It would be fantastic if you could follow, share, or even just visit occasionally!