Right, Where are we going…?

  Southern Ocean Series, Chapter: 1

Kochi-Goa-Mauritius, by land and air, boarding the ship and freaking out.

It all happened surprisingly suddenly. I mean, when I took up my first “job” as a Junior Research Fellow at a research institute in Kochi, my boss had told me it was a possibility. But still, it was quiet overwhelming when he called me and told me that I was going to the Antarctic Ocean. The ‘surprise’ element probably had something to do with the fact that we were to leave during the first week of February and I got this call on the 31^st of December.

 These are the specifics: Me and two of my colleagues were to participate in the Third Indian Expedition to the Southern Ocean (or the Antarctic Ocean) which was being organized by the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR), Goa between February and April, 2009. We were to board a Russian research vessel named Akademik Boris Petrov at Mauritius and sail roughly south, to study the intricacies of the Antarctic Ocean by collecting data and/or samples along the way and then sail back to Mauritius again.

 After some frantic shopping for everything from a humungous wheely suitcase to a dozen pairs of socks (as Dumbledore once said “One can never have enough socks…“) and a small truck full of plastic containers for our samples and other boring “science stuff”, we were ready – atleast as ready as we’d ever be for a trip like this. Any misgivings we had about taking off into high seas, on a modest sized ship and staying there for two months were…………. well, we just put it in a small box, locked it up and shoved it in the back of our mind (atleast, that’s what I did).

 In the first week of February, we boarded a train to Goa. Once there, we were put up at a nice swanky hotel and over the next 2 days, we met the other members and (in my case, vaguely) caught their names and scientific interests.

More specifics: There would be 7 women and 20 men in the scientific contingent, along with the ship’s Russian Officers and crew.

 Two days after we reached Goa, we were given a nice Farewell Party by our Hosts – and were packed off on a series of plane rides – from Goa to Mumbai and thence to Mauritius, via Dubai. Some 20 hours later, we finally landed on an Island that can only be described as a tropical paradise. There was no time to see much of it, though – most of what we saw was during the bus ride from the Seewoosagar Ramgoolam Airport to the docks of Port Louis, where our ship awaited. She was a modest thing, painted white, with her name painted on her in confusing Russian alphabet. I discovered that for the next  months, I would live with El in a modest sized cabin, furnished with a small table and narrow sofa, a comfortable looking bunk bed, a tiny refridgerator (in went the chocolates and my grandmothers pickles!) a small wash basin with a mirror above it, and some cupboards for our clothes. The fact that this was a cabin about 20 ft. x 6 ft. and didn’t have an attached bathroom is considered irrelevant – because that’s just how things are on ships packed to capacity!

The evening of the next day, after the sun had set on the tiny tropical Island, and the town of Port Louis was lit up in twinkling lights, we set sail – out into the forbidding winds and seas of the south Indian and Southern Ocean. Little did we know then that we would neither sight another ship nor land and that we wouldn’t encounter a human soul other than the ones on our ship for 45 days.

 Was I scared – Yeah!!

Was I excited – Heck, Yeah!!

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