The Exile's Bazaar
  • Home
  • About
  • Destinations
  • Book
  • Publications
  • Contact

Notes from a fascinating world.

The world is like a bazaar, full of interesting odds and ends, and I've been exiled into it. This is my all-over-the-map (literally and metaphorically) attempt at capturing some of the world's many wonders.

Antarctic Lives

3/23/2017

 
Picture
Ice shelf, Brown Bluff, Antarctica, with us little humans reduced to dots before it.
In my previous post I wrote about the legends of Antarctica, of Shackleton and Scott and Amundsen from the heroic age of exploration.

But Antarctica is such a forbidding place, a place unlike anywhere else on earth, not even the Arctic, that even today the men and women who go there are nearly as remarkable as their predecessors. Nowhere else on earth would the commercial traveler — there’s hardly any other kind, given the impossibility of reaching the seventh continent as a backpacker — find himself guided by such uncommon individuals.​
And there is self-conscious legacy at work. My expedition leader introduced herself on the first day to us as “Cheli from New Zealand,” where I grew up. Indeed she reminded me distinctly of a New Zealand type, the no-nonsense, pragmatic boarding school mistress, for instance. On the final night of the voyage, I went up to her to say thanks, and I asked her: “Cheli — I noticed that your surname is Larsen. You wouldn’t happen to be related to THE Larsen, would you?” Captain Carl Anton Larsen had sailed along the ice shelf now named after him in 1893. She told me that she was his great-great-granddaughter. 

Along for the ride as a guest lecturer on Antarctic history was a tall, gaunt, and elderly Irishman with wispy white hair and a hearing aid in his left ear named Jonathan Shackleton. He was a second cousin of Sir Ernest and the self-professed “family historian.” Tom Hanks once hired him to go along when Hanks chartered a private yacht to go to Antarctica.

And then there were the rest of the remarkable men and women who condescended to serve as guides.

There was Mykolaj, or Myko, a former commander of the Polish Antarctic research station. He gave a wry talk on what life was like when you lived on Antarctica for the year. “People discovered talents they never had. Let’s just say that many of those talents would have been better left undiscovered. We wound up with a lot of bad poetry, a lot of bad paintings.” 

When he came back after a year in Antarctica, he went to dinner with a woman he was interested in at a fancy restaurant. They finished a pleasant meal and walked out, “only to be chased by a very angry waiter.” Myko had forgotten to pay. There was no such thing as making a payment in Antarctica. “She couldn’t stop laughing. I was very embarrassed. I went back and gave the waiter a big tip. But then later I thought, to forget that there is such a thing as money — if that’s not freedom, then I don’t know what is.”

There was Noah the bird man from Oregon, the first human being on record to have seen 6,042 species of birds in a single year. At 30, he had authored two books. Even from a mile away he could identify the magnificent albatrosses that circled our ship, the largest flying animals in existence.

There was Colin from Scotland, the ice man, who had written his doctoral dissertation on ice on Mars, and who could tell you more than you ever wanted to know about icebergs and glaciers and ice shelves and ice sheets.

There was Sir Robert Swan, OBE, the first human being to reach both the North and South Poles on foot. He was there leading a group for his environmental advocacy organization. A would-be successor of Shackleton and Scott, even in middle age he had powerful shoulders and a torso thick as a tree trunk. His modesty, however, seemed more of the faux kind, more of a kind of preparation for when he then told you about his exploits in their full glory.

And then there was the couple of John from Australia and Mette from Norway who had been part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. John had worked as a parachute instructor, stuntman, and photojournalist in all your regular hotspots before entering the NGO world. “When they exhibited his photos in Warsaw,” Myko said, “they did it in the old palace, and our first lady was the sponsor.”

Indeed, John and Mette had met in 1990s Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. One evening I happened to sit with them at dinner. At some point in the conversation, I mentioned that I’d traveled there, oblivious of whom I was dining with, before I gathered from the way they spoke of that country that they knew it very well indeed. If people intelligent, accomplished, kind, modest, and self-sacrificing are your idea of the best sort of people, then they were among the best people I ever met.
​
And you wouldn’t have known it if you simply let them guide you around Antarctica. Spot that orca through the binoculars, by all means. Take a photo of the humpback showing its fluke. But this is the sort of place where the human being standing right next to you looking over the bow may well be infinitely interesting in his or her own right.
Picture
Crabeater seals relaxing on an ice floe.

Comments are closed.

    Author

    Writer, traveler, lawyer, dilettante. Failed student of physics. Not altogether distinguished graduate of two Ivy League institutions. Immigrant twice over. "The grand tour is just the inspired man's way of getting home."
    Follow me on Twitter (@W_T_Han) and Instagram (@wthtravel).
    ​https://www.scmp.com/author/william-han

    同是天涯淪落人,
    ​相逢何必曾相識?

    Updates Mondays.

     
    Want to be notified of new posts?
    Get newsletter
    Powered By Constant Contact
     

    Archives

    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016

    Categories

    All
    Afghanistan
    Africa
    Amazon
    America
    Antarctica
    Anthropology
    Archaeology
    Architecture
    Argentina
    Armenia
    Art
    Astronomy
    Books
    Brazil
    Buddhism
    Caribbean
    Caribbeans
    Caucasus
    Central America
    Central Asia
    Chile
    China
    Christianity
    Cinema
    Colombia
    Costa Rica
    Criticism
    Cuba
    Culture
    Easter Island
    Economics
    Ecuador
    England
    Essay
    Ethiopia
    Etymology
    Europe
    Family
    Film
    France
    Goths
    Halloween
    Hinduism
    History
    Huns
    Iceland
    Immigration
    Inca
    Indonesia
    Iran
    Iraq
    Islam
    Japan
    Kenya
    Korea
    Law
    Linguistics
    Literature
    Maldives
    Martial-arts
    Mathematics
    Medicine
    Mexico
    Middle East
    Mongolia
    Mythology
    Nepal
    New Zealand
    Pacific-islands
    Panama
    Persia
    Peru
    Philosophy
    Politics
    Portraits & Encounters
    Portugal
    Psychology
    Race
    Refugees
    Religion
    Rome
    Russia
    Science
    Sherlock Holmes
    Singapore
    South America
    Spain
    Sri Lanka
    Superman
    Syria
    Taiwan
    Television
    Travel
    Travel Advice
    Ukraine
    United States
    USA
    Uzbekistan
    Vaccination
    Voltaire
    Women
    Writing
    Zoroastrianism

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • About
  • Destinations
  • Book
  • Publications
  • Contact