EXPEDITION ACCOUNTS

TO THE LAST FRONTIER

"What brings the two of you to US?" asked the glum immigration officer at Seattle airport.

"We are doing this little journey from the Arctic to Antarctic," I replied, elaborating further on our mission.

"Ah! Like Michael Palin - Pole to Pole! You know him?" 

"No I don't. I would like to know him - but only if he is related to Sarah Palin."

The officer, who had so far been communicating with the visitors only with his index finger, guffawed loudly, his huge frame causing earthquakes inside his glass enclosure. 

"Is he related to you?" asked the officer, pointing at Dr Jain.

"No. He is a friend and a doctor - a surgeon," I replied.

"So you are carrying a surgeon with you!"

"Yes! Just in case I need a hip replacement - during these four months of ceaseless traveling."

More laughter.

"And what will you, an author, do for him?" the humoured man wanted to know.

"Read him bedtime stories," said I, coolly. 

With another burst of laughter he stamped us into the US of A. Before his mood changed again, we scampered down the escalator to retrieve our luggage.

Depositing our bags for the flight to Fairbanks, Alaska, we ran into this old, toothless, fair-looking baggage handler who was shouting directions to passengers in an accented English that could be roughly understood at the third attempt.

Taking control of our bags, he bellowed at the top of his voice: "Saare gadhey hain!" - they are all a bunch of asses.

We instantly warmed up to the fellow Indian.

"Where are you guys from?" he wanted to know.

"Dr Jain is from Maharashtra and I am from Gurgaon, Delhi," I answered.

"Gurgaon is not in Delhi. It is in Haryana. Devi Lal, Bhajan Lal, Aya Ram, Gaya Ram... All bunch of thieves!" he shouted, fisting the air. And then, turning to Doc Jain, he asked: "How is your chief minister - Prithviraj Chauhan?"

"Good man. Good man," replied Doc, nodding his head.

"So he is a small thief. There are small thieves. There are big thieves. But they are all thieves," observed the sagacious man. "But I like the great economist prime minister. He may have ruined your. economy and sunk the rupee to 69 for a dollar - but made me richer." Dismissing us, he bellowed: "Vote for Rahul Gandhi!"

"Ok. Will you vote for him too?"

"No, I am a BJP wallah!" he said - with glee and a toothless smile. 

An eerie silence prevailed in the large waiting hall of Alaska Airline as everybody was busy with their smartphones, iPads and iPods.

Thirty-six sleep-deprived hours after leaving home, we reached Fairbanks that bills itself as 'The Last Frontier', the gateway to the wilds of Alaska. Waiting for a taxi at 2 am, we scanned the clear sky for Aurora Borealis, the northern lights, that can be seen from Fairbanks eight days out of ten between mid-August and early April on dark, clear nights. 
 
Our cottage on the bank of River Chenna had a fan and a window AC and was equipped for all kinds of weather.

Rising from deep sleep, we went to the University of Alaska to meet Dr Uma Bhatt, a climatologist of Indian origin, working at the International Arctic Research Centre. As we drove up the scenic campus, a squadron of foraging Sandhill Cranes on their way from northern Alaska to New Mexico, took to the air.

Though born and raised in the US, Dr Bhatt's family was originally from Bhuj, Gujarat. Her father had come to America in the 1950s as a Fulbright scholar and remained here ever since. After doing her undergrad in engineering from University of Pittsburgh, she worked as a Peace Corps volunteer during the 1985-87 drought in Kenya - and that's when she developed an interest in climate change, pursuing it as a profession. Specialising in sea-ice, she has been studying changes in the Arctic tundra for the last 20 years. She showed us satellite pictures taken over 20 years that clearly indicate that the Arctic is loosing its ice cap faster than my head is loosing its hair. The thawing permafrost could release huge reservoirs of methane, speeding global warming even further. But she is not a prophet of doom. "Good things may still happen," she says. 'The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska', a recent report published by the Arctic Climate Research Centre, University of Alaska, states that 19 of the 20 National Weather Stations have reported temperature fall of 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit during the first decade - 4.5 degrees F in case of Western Alaska. Ice age cometh? 

Tomorrow early morning we fly to Dead Horse Creek on the Arctic and from there will roll all the way down to Cape Horn, 35,000 km away.