Planning

In 2020, when most of the flights were grounded and when there was no way to travel outside Australia, Qantas tied up with different tour operators to come up with interesting flight routes within Australia. One of these routes was to fly a scenic flight to Antarctica from the major cities of Australia. While Antarctica is a different continent, it is not part of any country and the flying route to the continent from Australia is considered as domestic flight route. So, the flight was planned as a day trip from Sydney with around 4 hours of Antarctic viewing during summer season.

As an Antarctic enthusiast, this flight sounded very exciting for me and the idea itself felt out of the box. 2020 just passed by and in 2021, I came across a flight to South Pole from Chimu Adventures. I couldn’t control my excitement. This one flies till 90 degrees south, which means a lot more time on the continent than a scenic flight. I spoke to one of the Adventure specialists to find out the costs and discount if any. The specialist suggested me that South Pole flight cannot guarantee great views of the continent as it needs to follow a single flight route and it completely depends upon the weather conditions. Also, in order to reach the South Pole which is far away, the flight flies at a greater altitude for most of the time, which can result in less viewing opportunity. The Antarctic scenic flight on the other hand is tailored to cover the best landscapes of Antarctica and they have 20 flight routes designed to navigate the flight to make the best of the weather situations. Also, it flies at a lower altitude once we reach Antarctica. After her suggestion, I went ahead with booking Antarctic scenic flight scheduled in Dec 2021 during southern hemisphere summer.

Itinerary

The duration of the flight is around 13 hours, of which it takes four hours to reach the continent, four and half hours over the Antarctica on a lower altitude and around four hours back to Sydney.

Since it is a scenic flight, most of the passengers will be interested in the window seat. In-order to optimize that, the operator came up with a concept of seat swap, which means we get to sit in aisle/window seat for the first half of the flight and change the seat in the second half of the flight, so that everyone gets an equal chance of viewing.

There are also different classes of seating such as Economy with limited view(Light Blue), Economy Wing(Pink), Economy No Wing(Violet), Premium Economy(Green), Business Class(Blue), Premium Business class(Grey).

Seating was a tougher one to choose for me. I wanted Economy No Wing Seat, but I chose Economy with Wing seat as it is a budget friendly option.

Journey

I was not completely confident about this trip with the lockdowns and other things happening around. Four weeks before the trip, I received a booklet containing all the details, documents, photography tips etc. That is when my excitement started building up and it started feeling real. I borrowed an SLR camera with zoom lens from my friend and practiced photography. I couldn’t believe that I am going to Antarctica and I could not think about anything else other than the trip a week before the journey.

Finally the D-day arrived – I always dreamed about my trip to Antarctica with snow jackets, boots and a lot of bags to pack, but never imagined I would go with a simple dressing and a backpack with a camera, power bank and goggles.

The flight departs from the domestic terminal and the boarding process happened at the gates directly.

There was a cute photo banner at the boarding gate. During boarding, we were provided with two boarding passes, a map of Antarctica and a stamp on the passport. Everyone boarding the flight looked very happy and excited at this unique flight.

Seating was one thing that I was very anxious about, I badly wanted a good seat and to my surprise, I got the seat which didn’t fall into any category, which is the red color seat from the seating map. The one between economy wing and economy no wing after the emergency exit. The highlights of this seat was that there was an extra window near the exit, along with regular window beside the seat with a greater leg space. I was on cloud nine with my seating option even before the takeoff.

The other lucky thing was that the flight is completely full except for one seat in my row. I got J and K seats, window and the middle, aisle seat was empty. For the first round of the trip, it was middle seat and window seat on the return trip. I couldn’t ask for more and felt completely grateful to have got these seats. My co-passenger was a very friendly lady who was also a single traveler. The seats and windows looked nice and big compared to regular flights.

We got a meal and snack and good entertainment system was available in the flight. The flight was completely silent in the first four hours and by the time, we entered the continent, there was great sense of euphoria and everyone of us got restless and started looking outside for a view.

It was initially cloudy when we entered and our pilot announced that we will head further inside which takes another 20mins where the view gets better.

The first glimpse of Antarctica was a large sheet of sea ice 🙂

We slowly moved to Drygalski Ice Tongue. By this time, the altitude of aircraft was reduced from 10000m to 5000m and things looked closer and clearer. The ice was broken and the pieces are beautifully floating on the Ross sea, which shined like jewels in the sunlight.

Trans-Antarctic mountains were the next ones and the peaks of the mountains looked very beautiful and perfectly carved. These mountains spread along the continent dividing it into east and west Antarctica. We could see the clouds floating below these mountains.

Mt Erebus is an active volcano, and we could see the sulphur fumes coming out of the peak. It looked so calm and covered completely with snow that its tough to believe its a volcano if not for the fumes from the peak. The volcano has been active since about 1.3 million years ago and has a long lived lava lake in its inner summit crater that has been present since at least the early 1970s.

The flight took a return trip from this point and it flew around this mountain. Seat swap was done and I got my window seat 🙂 We flew back on same route again with a slight change in direction. I simply stood infront of my seat to get the complete view from the window and it felt incredible watching the complete 180 degrees view of these magical landscapes. It was afternoon by that time and sun’s light added more magic to the place 🙂

At this point of time, we were at 77.5 degrees South, the farthest latitude I have ever been and very close to the pole.

I couldn’t start appreciating the texture and terrain – mix of whites and blacks in the world’s most remote, dry, windy continent.

Along with white and black, I could see a light blue colored snow in between. I remembered the concept of blue color of the ice from Iceland, which indicates its very old.

The heart shaped formation felt like a sign that this place loves me back 🙂

Next comes the surprise part of the trip – McMurdo Dry Valleys. These dry valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica. These valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby glaciers. It is one of the driest places on Earth and has not seen rain for nearly 2 million years.

Scientists consider the Dry Valleys perhaps the closest of any terrestrial environment to the planet Mars, and thus an important source of insights into possible extraterrestrial life. Researchers conducted a field expedition to examine the microbial population and to test a drill designed for sampling on Mars in the permafrost of the driest parts of the valleys, the areas most analogous to the Martian surface. They found no living organisms in the permafrost, the first location on the planet visited by humans with no active microbial life. This felt like a geological wonder to me, as I didn’t imagine a snow-free place in Antarctica.

After crossing the dry valleys, we found a strange canyon 🙂 Our pilot provided an excellent commentary of the formations we flew by making the experience even special.

We said a final bye to the continent and moved to a higher altitude and started our journey back to Sydney!

On the way back to Sydney, Mawson’s hut foundation team conducted an auction of some old items and a raffle as well which entertained the passengers. Everyone onboard looked very happy and content with the trip that they actively participated in the auction and bought the items with a far higher price than the starting bid. I bought a couple of raffle tickets, but didn’t win anything 😛

A beautiful sunset accompanied us on our way back 🙂 Coincidentally, it was a solar eclipse day in Antarctica and part of it visible in Australia too, but the timings didn’t match with the flight location to observe that.

We got two meals on the flight, along with multiple snacks, icecream and a chocolate. While I couldn’t enjoy my first meal, second meal was filling with rice and curries.

One of the Chimu specialists came around with a rubber stamp checking if anyone needs an Antarctica stamp on their passport and people were so excited that they got the stamps on their face and hands. Well, I got one too on my hand following the crowd 🙂

The energy onboard was enormous that people clapped when pilot thanked the crew or the passengers onboard before landing in Sydney. I have never been on a flight with a bunch of joyful passengers.

I don’t have enough words left to describe this experience, but one thing I can say for sure is that its a must-do for any travel enthusiast, and it is the best flying experience ever. I felt truly thankful to Chimu Adventures team for providing this rare and unique experience!