Polar explorer Robert Swan tells Priyanka Sharma about the perils of his journey to the two poles.
At the age of 11, Robert Charles Swan watched a film on Antarctica and made a decision. “I was going to go there,” says the 55-year-old British polar explorer. “I dreamt of being the first person to walk to the North and South Poles.”
Two decades later, on November 3, 1984, his dream became a reality. Swan began his Antarctic expedition, “In the Footsteps of Scott”, named after Robert Falcon Scott, a polar explorer who led the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole between 1910 and 1913, only to find that his team had been preceded by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition — and reached the South Pole on January 11, 1986. Three years later, Swan and his team also conquered the North Pole on May 14, 1989 — on foot of course.
The explorer is in India to launch phase IV of project SEARCH (Sensitization, Education and Awareness on Recyling for a Cleaner Habitat), a joint initiative by Tetra Pak and TERI, launched in 2009 with the aim to raise awareness in schools, on the issue of waste. But this isn’t his first visit to the country. “Well, I keep coming to India every now and then. There is something about the energy of this country which is contagious,” adds a smiling Swan. An avid environmentalist and motivational speaker, Swan participated in the Mumbai Marathon earlier this year and managed to complete the half run. “I was also on a Ganges expedition, from Gangotri to the Gomukh glacier where we focused on clean water, sanitation and renewable energy,” he adds.
He takes a moment to recount his days at the two poles. “Both the poles are extremely cold, more than you can expect!” Battling temperatures of -72 degrees Celsius, Antarctica is “the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth”, he adds. “However, what I experienced at the North Pole was unexpected and equally harsh. The ice cap had melted four months prior to when it was supposed to melt,” he remembers, “and we were a thousand kilometres away from the safety of land!”
On returning home, Swan took a while to adjust to the noise and the hustle and bustle of city life. “When you live in silence for a year, it (the noise) hits you really hard. I wore earplugs for weeks because otherwise it would give me a headache,” he says.
The harsh terrain and turbulent climate has prompted a realisation in Swan. “Both poles are like canaries trying to send across a message, like canaries down the mines. They are trying to tell us that they are melting and we should listen to them”, he stresses. “During my expeditions to the poles, I have witnessed the melting of polar caps. I have walked under the hole in the ozone layer and had my eyes change their colour. Witnessing the climate change from so close motivated me to take people to these places and create leaders out of them.”
In 2003, Swan and his company, 2041, led the first corporate Antarctic expedition. In addition, the Inspire Antarctic Expeditions (IAE) teams have helped design and build the world’s first education station (The E-Base) in Antarctica.Having walked to both the poles himself, Swan has a surprising piece of advice for future polar explorers. “Don’t walk to the poles. And if you want to, then you should write to me,” he says. “The last great exploration left on earth is to survive on earth not to walk to the poles!” Stressing the need for business leaders to take a step to combat environmental degradation, he invites them “to take the journey into the unknown” with him.
There are certain prerequisites which young polar explorers must keep in mind, insists Swan. “You have to get fit and fat which is harder to achieve than you can imagine,” he confesses. “The most energy-efficient medium of carrying weight is you. The mental toughness is most important,” he says. “If you aren’t prepared, it is going to hurt your body. But it is going to hurt your mind more!”
