Why do folks go to the North or South Pole?

One reason is… actually – no specific reason at all; just to go because… why not? To stand at the top or bottom of the world is just kinda cool.

Another reason: just the extremeness of it all. Some folks prefer a total lack of extremity: comfort, sun, beach, nice home/hotel, all the mod cons. Others are bored by comfort, but they like extreme contrasts between extremity and comfort ).

Another: some folks just follow their instinctual urge to ski and then walk to a pole over several days – only it won’t be ‘several days’, as a polar day can last five months!

Another: surely, some kinda crazy polar magnetism that attracts certain folks!

In the past, there was another reason: to get to a Pole first.

Regarding the South Pole, around 1910-11, two expeditions – Amundsen‘s and Scott‘s – made it to the South Pole, the former pipping the latter to the post pole! The Norwegians made it back too. The Brits, tragically, did not; a sad, yet heroic, tale. Macabrely, to this day, the Terra Nova Expeditioners still lie there, in their tents, long since gobbled up by the Antarctic ice (specifically – and even more gruesomely – under more than 20 meters of snow, and shifted by the glacier ~50 kilometers over 100+ years).

But regarding the North Pole, hmmm… I couldn’t recall who made it there first, so I had to look it up. Well, there are many claims to reaching it first, but the first undisputed one is that of a Soviet expedition in April 1948, i.e., 36 years after the South Pole! Btw, other expeditions soon after followed the Soviets’ lead, while the South Pole waited a full 44 years until it was to be visited by another expedition.

So, it turns out getting to the North Pole is harder than getting to the South Pole. Interesting. The Antarctic climate is much fiercer than the Arctic one, but crossing the firmly compacted snow underfoot in Antarctica is a lot simpler than crossing the loose, fluffy snow of the Arctic. Then there are the fissures in the Arctic ice you have to somehow navigate. There’s also the shorter window in the Arctic for getting to it – before the ice starts melting. In Antarctica there’s no danger of ice melting and merging with the ocean below it – there’s a whole terra-firma continent underfootice ).

Read on…

From time to time I find some planned OMG moments in my diary in among the unscheduled ones. This short post is about my most recent one…

Read on: it’s awesome!

Having strolled about Longyearbyen, it was time for the next leg on our mission to the North Pole – to get to Barneo ice camp. Here, much like in Longyearbyen, things weren’t quite so extreme and harsh as might be expected. The only issue for first-timers could be a queasy feeling in one’s lower abdomen – perhaps caused by butterflies.

Read on: Bye, bye mainland!..

Hi folks!

Ok, you’ve had your fun and games, now for some detail on my recent North Pole trip…

Now, unlike some, I wasn’t skiing to the North Pole. I consider myself sporty and adventurous… but I know my limits ). No, I was going the lazy man’s route:

Oslo > Longyearbyen, Svalbard > Barneo (on an An-74) > North Pole (in a chopper).

Ok, so where shall I start? Since we didn’t have much time at all in Oslo, I’ll start in Longyearbyen (the ‘Longyear Town’!).

We arrived there on a scheduled commercial flight from the Norwegian capital. There are several of these per week (there are also charter flights sometimes), but the exact number can change due to cancelations, in turn due to the extreme weather conditions. We were lucky – our flight was on schedule.

Read on: Mines, hills and country houses …

Hi folks!

As promised, herewith, my answers to Thursday’s polar quiz questions:

Ok, first – my answers to those four non-visual questions:

Question 1: How do you get to the North Pole?

Answer A: The simplest and cheapest method:

Buy a plane ticket from Dubai to Seattle or San Francisco. These routes fly real close to the Geographic North Pole. I believe the route Anchorage-Frankfurt (on Condor) also still does too (I flew it back in 2013, but I was sleeping around the time of the near-polar-flyover). While back in the mid-nineties there was a direct Aeroflot flight between Moscow and San Francisco, and they even gave out ‘flown over the North Pole’ certificates!

Answer B: Another, more expensive, way of getting to the North Pole – this time actually right to it, up close and personal freezing – is on one of the regular expeditions organized by the Russian company VICAAR.

Those two gents in the above pic are Victor Boyarskiy and Leonid Plenkin, who escort you up to the North Pole if you decide to go with VICAAR. Btw, that photo was taken in an Antonov An-74, en route from Svalbard to Barneo; from Barneo to the North Pole you take a helicopter.

Read on: another simple way …

Hi boys and girls!

Been a while, I know, but I’m back – and with loads of on-the-road tales to recount that have piled up…

Right now I’m in Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport, which is fitting: I’ve seen a lot of airport terminals just recently, but I haven’t had enough time in the departures lounges to keep up with events as they’ve been happening – as they’ve been happening so fast and furious and frequently and non-stop. I’ll at least make a start with some catch-up here…

I really should start where this recent spot of globetrotting began a few weeks ago – heading to the North Pole! But… Since I still don’t see much free time on the horizon for extensive travelogue writing and photo editing, I’ll settle for just this one interim post for now to keep things bobbing along on this here blog, and it will have to be a relatively brief one (I’ll do the proper catch-up a bit later once I get home). It’s one about some mind-boggling contrasts I’ve seen over the last few days…

Now, returning from one of the earth’s poles back to civilization is always a bit lot of a shock to the senses. From a place where there is literally nothing but cold, ice, snow and blue sky, to a place where there is warmth, no snow or ice; supermarkets, roads, pubs, offices, Wi-Fi, drinkable tap water and all the rest of civilization’s better features… well, you get the picture: it’s always going to blow the mind a touch and take some time to acclimatize…

Read on…

Throughout human history there have been many interesting moments and fascinating stories. Out of all of them, I reckon one of the most amazing is the story about how homo sapiens settled on remote islands across the Pacific.

Around two or three thousand years ago, from the shores of what is today Papua New Guinea, they sailed in the simplest and tiniest of boats, generation after generation, century after century, to populate island after island, apparently even reaching the shores of South America – 15,000 kilometers away!

Archeological research of this great eastward emigration is a little unconvincing so far, and anyway, surely many of the traces of mankind from back then will have been washed away or submerged under the rising ocean levels and lost forever. However – hurray for the geneticists! – modern-day investigations scientific alchemy now give us a detailed picture of the timing and direction of the two main branches of the eastward exodus and building up of the populations of Oceania.

The first wave of migration (a quick glance at trusty old Wikipedia tells me) took place some 30 to 50 thousand years ago from southeast Asia via modern-day Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, to Australia and the islands of Melanasia. Now, I’m no anthropologist, but something tells me that back then they probably didn’t need a boat to get to Vanuatu or even Fiji – they could have walked, or paddled ). The sea level was much lower then than it is today, and the ocean never gets that deep round these parts (as you can see on Google Maps) anyway. I reckon they didn’t make it further to Samoa as they weren’t sailors.

Read on…

Herewith, I continue my narrative from the fantastically fascinating Fijian islands and atolls.

Quick reminder: Fiji looks like this:

Here:

Read on…

Hi folks!

Do you know where the following pics are taken?

Or, for those who don’t live here – any guesses where this is?

And now?

What if I give you three guesses?

Read on…

Yes, a few Thursdays ago my day lasted 46 hours, not the standard 24. It all started when we set off early one morning on a long journey…

And the first islands we came to – not including Fiji’s own – were those of Vanuatu – another island nation to the west of Fiji…

Read on…