Women Who Travel Podcast: A Solo Skiing Expedition Across Antarctica
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Our solo travel mini series has followed guests on a work trip to Cannes and a six-month backpacking odyssey across South America. But in this third and final installment, we speak to a guest who pushed themselves even further—to Antarctica. Lale chats with Preet Chandhi, an endurance athlete who’s broken records skiing alone across one of the world’s most brutal and isolated landscapes, to find out how she trained for it, combatted loneliness, and relied on her survival skills during multiple polar expeditions.
Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and welcome to the third and final part of our Women Who Travel series exploring journeying solo. In this podcast and at Condé Nast Traveler more widely, we often say that you can go just about anywhere on your own these days. But Antarctica alone, few people can say that. However, my guest today, Preet Chandi is an endurance athlete who has broken records skiing alone in Antarctica on several expeditions starting in late 2022.
Preet Chandi: Antarctica isn't some lifelong dream for me. I don't know anything about it. It was about pushing boundaries, and—just to be really honest about it—it was really hard. I am not Superwoman. I struggled getting there. Some of it was incredibly difficult.
LA: Preet's competed in mountain races and ultra marathons, but she took up cross-country skiing just a few years ago, and it's only now she describes herself as an adventurer.
PC: I kept doing different challenges, and I think the more we do the more we realize we're capable of, and they just kept getting a bit bigger, and I wanted to do something big that was proving that I could go and do stuff. Being told so often I couldn't or I wasn't smart enough or good enough. I think there was part of me that wanted to probably prove something. And then it was bigger than me too, so it wasn't just to prove that I could do it, but to show if someone like me can go and do it, you can go and do anything. I just had this idea that I wanted to cross the landmass in Antarctica, and I so fiercely thought, "No, I think I can do this." And it wasn't through any arrogance. I'm coming as a novice, I was contacting everyone and anyone. I created Polar Preet the website, social media, contacting literally everybody and asking all the stupid questions because I literally did not know advice, what kit to get, borrowing everything I could to do training trips.
LA: Preet is a physiotherapist for Britain's Royal Army Medical Corps. She's used to being part of a team. When I think of Antarctica, I think of endless ice and snow and wind and silence, which is so isolating. I can't imagine feeling more alone than being on Antarctica.
PC: Yeah, so what's funny is I've always loved being in a team, and I'm like, "But you're going to do this by yourself." And I think the reason I wanted to do it on my own is because I knew it would be more of a challenge. When I did the first trip, that was the first time I'd been on my own. I think before that I hadn't even been on my own for more than two days. So it's hard, isn't it? You try to prepare as much as you can, but I don't think anything can really prepare you for it to be completely on your own, in your own mind and your own head. Physically these are hard, but mentally they're kind of a different ballgame.
LA: She took time off work and used some of her savings, but she had to get pretty creative to fund her expeditions so much so she traveled to Norway, Iceland, and Greenland to learn how to cross-country ski. I think there is a certain type of wealthy, privileged person who goes into these adventures with a level of arrogance thinking, "If I throw enough money at it, I'll be safe, and I can do it." And the reality is that you have to have a huge understanding of the landscape and the terrain that you are entering into and what it takes to care for your body and get there.
PC: February 2020 was one of my first training trips. So I booked two weeks of annual leave from work, and I booked on this course that was in Norway, and I literally found a course online about Polar expedition training course. I was like, "Perfect, literally what I'm looking for." And I remember trying to get sponsorship to do the first trip, and I remember speaking to one company who pretty much called me out and was like, "Well, you're pretty much an amateur then." And I was like, "Well, that is true." But I was like, "Yes, I am. Fair enough. However," I said, "I will never take anything for granted." I know that this isn't something I know a huge amount about, but I will do everything I can to learn everything from all these other people who have all this experience behind them.
LA: I think it would be easy to romanticize that in the context of the outdoors, but the reality is that adventure and anything to do with exploration is incredibly male dominated and always has been. And the stories that we get to read are usually read or told by men who did it.
PC: Yes, I saw all the badass women that had done amazing trips like Liv Arnesen, Ann Bancroft, who'd done really incredible trips out there, and also they're people that then make it possible for you.
LA: Is there a specific trip that one of them had done that kind captured your imagination.
PC: I think it was Liv Arnesen that I listened to on a podcast who at school said "I wanted to go to the South Pole" and the other students just laughed, or they were like basically making a joke. She made it happen, which I just think is absolutely amazing.
LA: Stretching between November 2022 and January 2023, Preet covered 922 miles pulling supplies on a sled that weighed 160 pounds, and her only contact with the world was a satellite phone. What records did you break?
PC: The first expedition, I was the first woman of color to do a solo expedition on the continent, and that second trip I did broke two world records. So it was the longest solo unsupported, one-way polar ski expedition for a female. And then I broke the male record as well. I broke a record for length, basically.
LA: Describe to me what it was actually like going on that first solo expedition. What was that first night like sleeping on your own?
PC: I remember being really nervous when the plane flew away because you're dropped off, and then that's it. You do a 360 and there's nobody there. So I was pretty nervous seeing it fly away.
LA: I think I'd have thrown up, just picturing it, it's terrifying.
PC: But then the other part, I was really excited to start. There's been such a long lead-up to get to this point. So I think I slept okay. I was trying to do long hours, 12, 13 hours a day.
It's this huge white desert. It's incredibly beautiful. The South Pole is around 2,800 meters, but just from being at that height before, it just feels higher when you're there, you do feel like the breathlessness as you get higher.
LA: Any trip that takes you to a region of extreme weather has its hardships. But when you're trying to break polar records, you're having to work extra hard both mentally and physically to push past these incredible challenges in inhospitable circumstances.
PC: Antarctica is an incredibly windy continent, and when my tent is up, I remember the first few days when I was really windy, I had to just to double check that my sled hadn't blown away. When it's calm, cold, it's okay, it's manageable. But with the wind, it's just something else. The wind chill is like this bitter cold. And you can't really make any mistakes. For example, taking your gloves off, just get the food in properly because it just gets so cold so quickly, and then you'll lose dexterity and that causes other issues.
LA: It was that first trip that gave Preet the confidence to attempt a speed record on her next solo cross-polar trip that's coming up after the break.
Welcome back to Women Who Travel.
PC: I took unpaid leave from the army to do that trip, the second trip. I was hoping to do a land crossing, and my aim was to get to the edge of the land on the other side. I remember feeling very rushed at the time. Again, keen to get started. We were delayed getting onto the ice, which is completely normal. You have to wait for a good weather window to fly into Antarctica in the first place. And then I started the next day, and I got some storms very quickly, and it just wasn't a good start.
I remember my neck pain came on probably day three, which was terrible. I was like, I've got a 70-day trip. And then my calf injury again, it was like the first two weeks, so it wasn't a good start. So you only take so much pain relief with you because I don't want to carry extra things. I take hopefully what I won't need, but I then started using it quite early on, so I then knew that I was going to have to ration my pain relief, which I did.
LA: Any trip that takes you to a region of extreme weather has its hardships, but when you're trying to break polar records, you're having to work extra hard both mentally and physically to push past these incredible challenges in inhospitable circumstances. In Preet's second South Pole expedition, there was more wind, like a lot more wind, which created tall ridges in the snow.
PC: It was kind of like a nightmare. I remember doing two hours at once, and there was a lot of sastrugi, so these wind shaped ridges and they were just huge. And I would basically fall 14 times every two hours, and I felt like I was in this nightmare that I couldn't get out of. I'd fall, I'd hit my head, I'd check with my mitt that there was no blood, there wasn't. I'd get up, I'd go another 10 minutes, I'd fall again, I'd get up.
LA: And so this was quite different terrain from the first.
PC: Yes, so for both I was on skis pulling a sled, but with Antarctica, it depends what the weather's been like. So these wind shaped ridges were, to be fair, I hadn't been on this side of the South Pole before, but from other people that had been there, what they described was different to what it was like. But I do know that year that it had been really, really windy. So the conditions were challenging and more challenging than I thought they were going to be.
I've always lost weight after I do the trips. The first trip I'd lost about 10 kilograms, second one was 20, it was a bit more. I was quite sleep deprived towards the end, and I started hallucinating, and I remember having this little old lady with me, and I had a dog with me, too.
LA: Oh my God.
PC: To vivid hallucinations. And the worst thing is I thought I was dreaming, and I just couldn't get out of my dream. I didn't understand why. Just before that I'd seen people coming out of the ground. And the worst thing is I remember patting myself over and thinking, "It's not me. Something else is going on here, but I'm not the problem." And with a team, that is probably not something that happens as much because you look out for each other that way.
So I then stopped, and I put the tent up, which I think I'm doing this in my dream, and I got my satellite phone, and I called my partner, and I said, "What date is it?" And he told me the date, and I was like, "Okay, something's wrong." So then I put the phone down and called the logistics company, who basically were like, "When was the last time you slept?" et cetera. I then ended up sleeping.
But I think that situation could have been a lot worse and could be more dangerous than it ended up being because I remember I was confused. I didn't know which direction I'd just come from, and then nobody else was there. I was looking at my own tracks and following my tracks back and ended up basically just losing that day. I'd hardly moved in 17 hours or something like that. And I look back now, I realize it came on gradually because I was seeing people come out of the ground before. Before I'd seen the little old lady and the dog, and then we were trying to get out this mountain. I remember it quite well. Because I remember sticking my ski pole out and the people coming out of the ground and thinking, "Nobody tells me that this happens when you get this close to the South Pole."
LA: I mean the second one you said you set out to do 70 days.
PC: Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was.
LA: That's 70 days by yourself in the most extreme conditions possible, things feeling like they're going wrong. I drop my shopping, and I feel like I want to cry. So how did you keep yourself mentally strong? Did you have tricks?
PC: So I wanted to just keep going, and I think I used to count a lot. So I used to count to 100 over and over again when I was on the second half of my trip, and I was going much slower. I was basically counting a number and then breathing four or five times in between and then two, and then breathing four or five times and three. I really struggled to get away from it. This little voice that's telling me that you failed, you've let people down.
So I don't have internet. I basically leave a voicemail, and back home, it's my sister-in-law typing that up on my blog and my partner. So I can't see what the response is or what other people are saying, and I just had this fear. And I struggled to get away from that. And I think even when you are in those times, you can still be moving. And I'd remind myself of that because, and I'm not normally somebody who's been in situations where I think I cannot keep... Do you know what I mean? Like I don't think I can keep going, this is too much. And I remember thinking that, and then I'd remind myself that I'd done the last two hours, and I didn't think I could do those two hours either. So if I could do those two hours, then I could probably do the next two hours as well.
LA: For each trip, Preet hired an Antarctica-based transport and logistics company, and she kept in contact with them every 24 hours.
PC: They're called Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions, and they basically run this logistics company in Antarctica, and they have a base there for three months of the year, basically. So from November to January, which is the summer seasons in Antarctica, they will drop me off in a good weather window, and then they're the ones that will pick me up as well. I remember hugging Rob Smith, who was one of the people to pick me up, who's one of the guys for the logistics company, giving him a hug and just bursting into tears.
LA: Just having that human touch.
PC: And I think I remember saying "It was so hard" over and over again.
LA: It must have been weird to be surrounded by people.
PC: So it was three people there to pick me up. Helped with everything, literally bending down to take my skis off. Someone was there to help me get my jacket on, then they had their tents up. So I then went and sat in Rob's tent, and he made me a hot chocolate because they'd asked me a few days on the satellite phone what I wanted, and basically I was starving. I was like, "Carbs."
LA: Give me a burger.
PC: A cheese and salami sandwich, cans of coke, a hot chocolate, Snickers. So he was just feeding me. He gave me pain relief, which was one of the things I wanted. And so I don't know how long we sat for, but it must've been maybe an hour, maybe a bit more. And we got in the Twin Otter, the small plane, and I remember it stopped to refuel a place.
And at that place there's a little port cabin where there's a toilet where you can sit on a seat, and obviously I haven't sat down to a toilet for 70 days, and I needed to go, but my exhaustion was more that I didn't want to leave the warm plane, so I just stayed in.
And then we landed back in the base camp, and I was just so hungry. I cannot explain how hungry I was. So I said I wanted to go to cook house. I went in, and that was like, "Oh, there was actually loads of people," and people started clapping, and I was quite emotional. It was quite overwhelming.
LA: After the break, how professional and personal travel forged the way for Preet's later solo trips.
Now more from Preet on her many travels. You really have ended up being out in these sort of frozen terrains. What so attracted you to adventuring in these spaces and how did you get there?
PC: I didn't even like the cold.
LA: I mean, we're both from England, so we're not used to extremes.
PC: Exactly. For the outdoors, I think that was the military that opened me up to that because we would go hiking with weight on our back. And I remember being there at times thinking, "Oh, this is quite miserable." It is terrible weather. I had no idea where I was in some field carrying weight on my back. But I think that was my first experience of doing things like that in the outdoors. And I remember I think much later going to do stuff myself, and I'd still, I mean to this day when I go hiking, I still use my army boots.
LA: What early outdoors experiences helped you become someone who crosses Antarctica?
PC: I don't know. I find growing up in the UK was actually really hard to see the outdoors as a fun, enjoyable place. I think there is this sort of cultural attitude where it's like to be in the outdoors is to suffer and to not actually enjoy yourself. It's like you have to be in the wind and the rain and having a horrible time to prove something to yourself. And it made me hate it. And it's only actually since living in the US that I've realized how much I like hiking and being outside.
LA: Was it illuminating to you when you kind of put those army boots on and realized, "Oh, this is actually something I enjoy, and maybe I could be quite good at?"
PC: So culturally, it was not the thing to do at all. I remember doing an interview with someone, so I'm from Derby, so the mid of England, and I was asked, what were your favorite walks growing up? And we've got a really lovely area called the Peak District, not far. And I said one of my favorite walks was walking to the supermarket. We used to walk to Asda, the local Asda.
LA: The only place I would walk is the High Street.
PC: Because we didn't do that, and it was only 50 minutes down the road, but we never went there. It wasn't the normal thing to do at all. And I think the thing, so the experience, yes, the army was the first. But I don't think it was enjoying it. I think I felt some kind of freedom from it. You're not being judged by the outdoors. It doesn't matter how slow you are, how quick you are. It just, yeah, I think freedom was the main emotion.
LA: Sort of a freedom to be yourself as well as a freedom physically.
PC: Yes. Yeah, 100%. I had skills from the military, crossover skills. So for example, I knew how to navigate, I knew how to use a map and a compass. I was dragging. So part of my training was to drag tires, and I had put up a tent before. I hadn't done it on snow, but I'd done it. So I think all of those things were really helpful.
LA: Army deployments where she said she enjoyed the teamwork took Preet to Nepal, Kenya, and South Sudan. Long before that though, she was already used to traveling with her parents.
PC: We used to go to India a lot when I was really young.
LA: That's you and your family?
PC: Yes, and I don't remember that much of my childhood. I probably went about 11 times by the age of 18, and I remember in the village when they got a western toilet, and they were so excited that they had a toilet with a seat ,and you could sit on the toilet. But I feel like it was normal that you'd squat to go to the toilet. Which is funny because for the trips, I squat to go to the toilet, and it's not a big deal. And we sleep on a manja, like the bed's outside, you'd be able to walk on the roofs for ages. It was like a dirt track to get to that village for two hours.
LA: Wait, where in India were you?
PC: In UP, so in a place called Uttar Pradesh in India. And so yeah, I think having those experiences with my early memories of travel. I actually played tennis when I was younger, and I lived in the Czech Republic from the age of 16 to 19, and I used to travel around Eastern Europe to tournaments on my own. And I think that definitely... I say how confidence. I remember being quite nervous traveling, but I would do all the planning and preparation that I needed to do, like booking my hotel, booking my trains, booking my flight.
LA: That's a lot of planning and logistics. I think that people when they're actually in adulthood get kind of stressed and overwhelmed by it. Did you just kind of dive into it, and just, I don't know, almost it was the naivety of being 16 years old, you didn't quite realize how much you had to organize?
PC: When you're doing things at that age, it becomes your normal, so you don't necessarily question, “Is this normal?”
LA: Tell me a little bit about those early train rides around Eastern Europe and other parts of Europe. What were the routes? What were you seeing? What did it feel like to just be out there on your own?
PC: If I was traveling, I was always quite conscious of where I was sitting. If I was traveling on my own, I'd quite often befriend an older couple and start speaking to them. I also had some negative experiences. I can't remember which country it was. It was definitely in Eastern Europe. When I was 18, I remember somebody spitting at me and my friend because I think we looked a little bit different to everybody else there, which wasn't very nice.
I was based in a place called Prostějov near Slovakia and had really fun memories of being there. I'll be honest, I remember at age 19 coming back to England feeling really nervous that I was so far behind academically. I remember getting into university and actually realizing "I had quite a lot of life experience." And yes, don't get me wrong, I was behind academically. That first year of university was quite hard, but I'm also really glad of the different experiences that I had at that age.
LA: All of these experiences forged Preet's commitment to traveling extensively. And so she says it wasn't a huge leap to go solo.
PC: People talk about loneliness, but I think you can feel that same loneliness when you are surrounded by people. And I think it's hard to be in your own thoughts, in your own mind, and being in a space where you can get comfortable with that is really powerful.
LA: Near the beginning of our conversation, you said that often the person doing these sorts of expeditions isn't supposed to look like you. And these records that you've set now say otherwise. How much did you feel when you were actually out in Antarctica? Did it bring back that sense of freedom and of belonging that you found on those early outdoors experiences?
PC: The first trip I remember enjoying parts of it. I didn't enjoy the second trip. That 70 days was so hard, and even on days where I probably should have been easier, I was injured. So I didn't feel the relief or enjoy it. And you know what? That's okay. I knew what I was trying to achieve. And these trips, I mean they've always been bigger than me. And it's not about the records, but I was proud of myself for pushing myself that far. It's an incredible place to be. I feel really privileged to have been there. And I feel, even though it's hard, I feel like there's a piece there that I'm not sure I'd be able to find anywhere else. And even though I'm in Antarctica, you can relate to people in a way that you don't even realize sometimes, and that's really incredible.
LA: Her sister-in-law and partner wrote up her satellite phone messages up on her blog and they were shared with some 50,000 Instagram followers. Then there were also occasional messages to very close friends.
PC: When people asked others to be their bridesmaids, they do in a special way. So I decided beforehand that I was going to ask my bridesmaids on my blog. So I have my satellite phone, and I told my partner to make sure that they... I mean they were listening every day anyway, but to make sure that they'd heard that day's blog and asked them to be my bridesmaid. I thought that was a unique way to do it. And I actually got married in March this year, and I think the other thing was those blogs, they helped me as well.
LA: Preet, this was so excellent. I'm just so fascinated by all of your adventures and very jealous.
Thanks for listening. We're off next week, but we'll be back after that with a story about not just falling in love with Thailand, but deciding to move there too. Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I'm Lale Arikoglu and you can find me on Instagram @Lalehannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus, James Yost, Vince Fairchild, and Pran Bandi. The show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Jude Kampfner of Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. Stephanie Kariuki is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's, head of Global Audio.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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