The Sikh Polar Explorer at the end of the world

“I remem­ber that feel­ing of being like I didn’t fit in,” says Preet Chan­dri. ​“And it’s hard, because you don’t even want to say it. I didn’t know there were no polar bears on Antarc­ti­ca because I don’t want peo­ple to think I’m stu­pid. It felt like going to a din­ner and not know­ing which knife and fork you’re sup­posed to use.”

In my head the term ​‘Polar explor­er’ brings up an image of Shack­le­ton or Scott, Hillary or Amund­sen. Windswept and inter­est­ing, gnarled and rugged, a fas­ci­nat­ing beard that holds court around a flick­er­ing oil lamp, prob­a­bly with a pipe. Preet Chan­di MBE how­ev­er, is tall, slim, melanat­ed and good at ten­nis. Her hair looks as though it’s no stranger to prod­uct and she some­times wears lipstick. 

She smiles a lot and is a pecu­liar type of earnest that’s hard to pin down. A Sikh woman that bold­ly defies the per­cep­tion of what Euro­pean adven­tur­ers are sup­posed to look or act like.

I ini­tial­ly became aware of her when I stum­bled across a pic­ture on Insta­gram of Preet drag­ging a car tire up a hill, then met in per­son at her inau­gur­al Antarc­tic trip cham­pagne recep­tion. Held at the Shard in Lon­don on behalf of her spon­sors, it was an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence. I felt out of place, eas­i­ly the most under­dressed in the room and one of per­haps ten oth­er peo­ple not from big busi­ness or the army.

An awk­ward chat with a fear­some female brigadier who looked like she had secret­ed a bay­o­net about her per­son gave me a sense of the world Preet inhab­it­ed. In get­ting to know her, I increas­ing­ly get the feel­ing that this isn’t the place she is most com­fort­able, even though she has had a pres­ence in the mil­i­tary since 2008. She served as a physio at the rank of cap­tain and has been on oper­a­tions in South Sudan, Nepal and Kenya.

“I’m now on my career break from the Army, it’s nice because it just gives me some time,” Preet reflects. ​“One of the things I strug­gled with so much before was that it was all just so busy. Now I have a bit more capac­i­ty, I realise all the things in my life I didn’t have time to do. Hope­ful­ly now I can try and make some mon­ey back and, you know, live. There are so many things I want to do.”

Preet’s a talk­er. The words not so much spilling, but cas­cad­ing out. It’s a riv­er of con­scious­ness, with rapids of excite­ment and eddies of self-ques­tion­ing. It’s rather over­whelm­ing when con­duct­ing an inter­view and I’m forced to aban­don my pre­pared line of ques­tion­ing from the get-go. I like this approach, and I’m intrigued by Preet as a person.

At the time of writ­ing, she has been to the Antarc­tic three times, each vis­it rais­ing the bar on per­son­al and world records. She is the first Woman of Colour to ski solo unsup­port­ed to the South Pole, holds the claim of longest jour­ney ever skied solo unsup­port­ed one way across the Antarc­tic (1,485km in 70 days and 16 hours) and it the fastest ever woman to ski solo unsup­port­ed to the South Pole (1,130km in 31 days, 13 hours and 19 min­utes) – the last two records both claimed in the same year (2023). She was named the ​’23 Explor­er of the Year by the Sci­en­tif­ic Explo­ration Society.

For about five months of the year the sun nev­er man­ages to rise above the hori­zon. In the sum­mer months, expect 24 hours of con­stant sun­light and an aver­age tem­per­a­ture of around ‑27°C at the pole. The pole itself is high, sit­ting on top of an ice plateau at 2800m above sea lev­el, yet because of cen­tripetal force – an effect of the planet’s spin – it throws much of the atmos­phere toward the equa­tor and thus makes it feel even higher.

With the excep­tion of a cou­ple of small, hardy plants, some pen­guins and seals around the coastal regions, and the odd creepy crawly on the near­by islands – it is devoid of life. Nature in all its tena­cious abil­i­ty to fill a niche has thor­ough­ly failed; it’s shut the door in defeat and hung up a sign say­ing ​‘closed for busi­ness’. It is bleak, hos­tile and inhos­pitable in the truest sense of the word.

“It was cold and windy, and the last few days were like a night­mare that I just couldn’t get out of,” she says. ​“Every­thing that could go wrong seemed to. I’m rationing my food because I’m doing such long days and I was starv­ing. I was so hun­gry, not even able to have the tiny piece of choco­late I want­ed because I need­ed it for the next day, it was unbe­liev­ably hard.”

Notwith­stand­ing the occa­sion­al glimpse of blue sky, your clothes or your equip­ment, colour sim­ply doesn’t exist in the Antarc­tic. Assum­ing it’s not a total white out, it’s a white-lean­ing grey-scale as far as the eye can see in every pos­si­ble direc­tion, all of which is north. No life, no colour and lim­it­ed topog­ra­phy for hun­dreds of miles. Oth­er than the phys­i­cal feel­ing of pain, the only sen­so­ry input is often just the sound of the wind as it hur­tles across a bar­ren land­scape col­lid­ing with mil­lion-year-old ice crys­tals of intense puri­ty across a sin­gle human, which, by all rights shouldn’t be there. The mono­chro­mat­ic lone­li­ness of the des­o­late envi­ron­ment can be debil­i­tat­ing, a self-imposed soli­tary con­fine­ment on the edge of the world, the stuff of post-apoc­a­lyp­tic hor­ror nov­els and real life tragedy.

To clas­si­fy as a ​‘ski solo unsup­port­ed’ attempt you can­not accept any exter­nal resup­ply of food or equip­ment. This means you have to take every­thing with you, in this instance ​‘take’ means ​‘pull’ and the pull is a sled called a pulk which holds all the hard­ware (tent, food, stoves, spares, radio, etc) nec­es­sary for your sur­vival. Sub­ject to the type of trip, the con­tents of Preet’s pulk is about 70 – 90 kilos. It’s the equiv­a­lent of pulling a new­born ele­phant, a ful­ly grown male leop­ard or two ceram­ic toi­lets – every day, over a frozen hell­ish waste­land for two and a half months, whilst avoid­ing crevass­es and gen­er­al­ly try­ing your best not to die.

“It wasn’t easy to do, you know, I’m not like a ski­er, it was bloody hard. I think part of it is not just to prove to myself, but prove to oth­ers and say, ​‘Look, I’m real­ly work­ing to do this.’”

Humans are phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly pret­ty bad at deal­ing with extreme cold. Our knack, it seems, is learn­ing how to pro­tect our­selves when faced with chal­lenges. It’s often the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of such jour­neys that prove the hard­est to adapt to. The lev­el of fear is extra­or­di­nary when out in such hos­tile envi­ron­ments, as is the intense lone­li­ness expe­ri­enced from long peri­ods of iso­la­tion. Dis­turbed sleep, impaired cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty, hunger, exhaus­tion all cre­ate unhealthy lev­els of anx­i­ety that play dan­ger­ous games with the mind. ​“I’ve got hor­ri­ble thoughts going into my head. And at the same time, I was so emp­ty, I was just bro­ken,” she says. 

In our dai­ly lives, we are bom­bard­ed with infor­ma­tion. When deprived of this for pro­longed peri­ods, almost every­one will expe­ri­ence hal­lu­ci­na­tions as the brain’s nerve path­ways attempt to make sense of the lack of sen­so­ry stim­u­la­tion, cre­at­ing a fan­ta­sy world to fill the void. Depres­sion can hit, espe­cial­ly at the dread­ed half-way mark when indi­vid­u­als, already weak and slight­ly trau­ma­tised, realise that they have to do it all over again. This ​‘third-quar­ter phe­nom­e­non’ can be make or break but as Preet says: ​“Antarc­ti­ca isn’t just a place on the map; it’s a test of human endurance and resilience. My expe­di­tions there taught me the true mean­ing of perseverance.”

If, after under­stand­ing all of this, you decide that the Antarc­tic sounds like your kind of place, the best time to attempt a chal­lenge is dur­ing the south­ern hemi­sphere sum­mer between Novem­ber and Jan­u­ary. 24-hour day­light and com­par­a­tive­ly man­age­able tem­per­a­tures pro­vide the best oppor­tu­ni­ty for suc­cess, both in terms of real­is­ing your attempt and in sus­tain­ing your life. There are a num­ber of pos­si­ble routes to the pole but Preet chose the most ​‘pop­u­lar,’ although not the short­est, from The Her­cules Inlet, which could be described as being on the west of the land mass – although, tech­ni­cal­ly when you are at the pole there is no west.

From sea lev­el you encounter a steadi­ly hard climb through a high­ly crevassed route until you even­tu­al­ly reach the polar plateau. Once on the ice cap it’s a con­tin­u­ous slog of a rise, gen­er­al­ly with a head­wind, over large wind­blown sas­tru­gi (snow and ice struc­tures cre­at­ed by wind ero­sion) until you reach the pole. As well as man­ag­ing ener­gy, injury, heat reg­u­la­tion, ill­ness, men­tal health and nav­i­ga­tion, you are giv­en a strict cut-off point for any attempt; the last flight out doesn’t wait for late com­ers. There are eight times as many peo­ple who climb Ever­est in a year than have ever made a suc­cess­ful solo unsup­port­ed attempt to the South Pole. It is in short, one of the tough­est long-dis­tance human pow­ered chal­lenges a human is phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly capa­ble of doing.

“It’s an amaz­ing place to be,” she says. ​“It is. It’s a huge white desert on a sun­ny day, so when the sun is out you can see for miles and miles ahead, but it all looks the same – you have no idea if you are going the right direc­tion. It’s hard men­tal­ly because you don’t have any land­marks that you can ref­er­ence, the only way you can tell which way to go is because of your com­pass and some­times the wind direc­tion.” Her eyes seem to defo­cus, I feel she may have been trans­port­ed back to a moment on one of her trips. It’s a rare break from her earnest sto­ry­telling where she gives lim­it­ed time to reflection. 

The way Preet presents her­self is deceiv­ing, she’s served all over the world and has a legit­i­mate list of hikes ticked off the adventurer’s hand­book. She’s knocked out marathons and ultras, includ­ing the infa­mous Marathon des Sables, often tout­ed as one of the tough­est foot races on earth. The army has undoubt­ed­ly giv­en her a sense of deter­mi­na­tion, resilience and order in her prepa­ra­tion and method­ol­o­gy, as well as oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence much of the world.

How­ev­er, I sense that this is a non-typ­i­cal rela­tion­ship, mul­ti­fac­eted and com­plex. There are cur­rent­ly around 75,000 active per­son­nel in the British army, of whom about 11 – 12% are females and in total rough­ly 130 iden­ti­fy as Sikh, just 0.17% of the army. We don’t need to have served to get an idea of what the expe­ri­ence of a Sikh woman in the army might look like, so when I touch on it she is guarded.

On her first trip she took unpaid leave, hav­ing to find spon­sors and self-fund the entire attempt, return­ing with a ton of debt. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly the pic­ture you get when you go online to read the fea­tures and see the news clips. Upon get­ting back she was sent on a sea­son-long PR push into schools, dri­ving up and down the motor­way telling her sto­ry and, we assume, giv­ing a soft touch army sell. ​“It was an intense time. I came back from the best trip and then I was lit­er­al­ly doing four months of school talks back to back before going straight back to work on the Mon­day,” she sighs.

Preet is an obvi­ous role mod­el for young peo­ple, although the cyn­ics out there may use the word ​‘parad­ed’ to describe a school tour, and could be for­giv­en for think­ing a deal has gone down some­where along the line. How­ev­er well-inten­tioned and hon­ourable the army’s use of her, she is def­i­nite­ly tick­ing a few box­es for their fail­ing diver­si­ty fig­ures. Preet seems com­fort­able with this, however.

“At the end it’s just so raw, you know what I mean? Just so incred­i­bly raw. Every step I took in Antarc­ti­ca was a reminder of how far I’ve come and how much far­ther I can go. My jour­ney is a tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of self-belief and determination.”

There is an irony to going to the edge of the earth by your­self and not find­ing escape. For climbers, run­ners, row­ers, swim­mers, any­one who feels the vis­cer­al urge to explore the tol­er­ance of the human mind and body, there comes a time when even the most psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly defend­ed must face the inevitable and con­front their very being. 

“It’s a men­tal prison,” she says. ​“Your dark­est, deep­est thoughts come to you and there’s no escap­ing them. I strug­gled men­tal­ly just to get away from my own thoughts, my demons. All the frus­tra­tion and anger towards peo­ple, who I felt went out of their way to make things a lit­tle bit hard­er for me, or not let me go and push my bound­aries. That’s tough. It wasn’t fuelling me. I wasn’t able to use the frus­tra­tion or anger to help me do the task. It wasn’t help­ing me, it was drag­ging, like pulling extra weight.”

The ​‘peo­ple’ she refers to could be described as ​‘the estab­lish­ment,’ although she’s quick to point out that there were numer­ous indi­vid­u­als in the out­door indus­try that have sup­port­ed her and made her trips pos­si­ble. But that’s the ele­phant in the room, the Brown girl who didn’t know there were no polar bears in the South Pole and then turns up and snatch­es records from the hands of white men. It’s bound to grate in the wood­en-pan­elled halls of some long-stand­ing gentlemen’s clubs. Claims that she’s ​‘not a real explor­er’ or that she doesn’t deserve the acco­lades she has received feel at best bit­ter, and at worst misog­y­nis­tic and poten­tial­ly racist.

When I speak to peo­ple like Preet I always won­der, ​“Why?” Why go to such far reach­es? What’s the pot of gold that you are hop­ing to find? 

“You know what?” she says to fin­ish the inter­view. ​“For me, it’s that we are just as capa­ble. I have been in so many spaces where I felt I did not belong, and you know what? We do belong. I want to say to peo­ple that for me it’s adven­ture, but for you it could be lit­er­al­ly any­thing. It could be edu­ca­tion or sports, what­ev­er it is for you, do it, what­ev­er you feel like. You do belong.”

Fol­low Preet Chan­di on Insta­gram.

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