Sudipta Sengupta, First Indian Woman To Set Foot On Antarctica, Recalls Her Trip

A pioneering geologist and a mountaineer trained by Tenzing Norgay, Sudipta Sengupta is one of the first Indian women to set foot on Antarctica and one of only nineteen women so far to be awarded the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (1991). 

In Breaking Rocks and Barriers, she narrates her many adventures as a geologist studying and doing fieldwork in remote areas around the world—from unexpected encounters with snakes in the Jaduguda mines of Bihar and trekking across a ‘black glacier’ in Norway to being engulfed by a thundercloud in Sweden and being greeted by a flock of penguins in Antarctica. In between are memorable mountaineering experiences, whether it is the first women’s expedition to Ronti peak in the Himalayas in 1967 or the all-women expedition to an unexplored peak, which they were the first to climb and name. 

Here's an excerpt from Sudipta Sengupta's Breaking Rocks and Barriers

The International Geodynamics Project was formulated to study the evolution of the Caledonian mountain chain in different countries. The geology department of Uppsala University was one of the participants in this project. It was under the leadership of Hans Ramberg, who asked me to do fieldwork in Norway for two field seasons for this project. My job was to map the area around Follafoss, a village north of Trondheim, and study the structural relationships of different rock types there. 

In the summer of 1977, I went with Professor Ramberg to Norway. We drove from Uppsala to Trondheim. Before going to our site in Follafoss, we spent a couple of days in his summer cottage near Trondheim. Lillemor was already there and was busy preparing an excellent meal for us. The professor had a big library there and I was very interested in reading some of those books. But whenever I went there to have a look, he would ask me to go to the kitchen and help his wife.

To please him, I went to the kitchen and asked Lillemor if she needed any help. Lillemor gave me some potatoes to peel, but after seeing me struggle, she just laughed and told me to go take a walk around the house. At lunch, when her husband asked what I had cooked, Lillemor smiled at me and answered, ‘Oh, she made these tasty potatoes!’ 

The cottage was located near a fjord and the professor had a sailboat that he used for extensive fieldwork along the coast. ‘Fjord’ is a Viking word that refers to a long, narrow sea surrounded by mountains on three sides. Geologically, fjords are ancient glacial valleys formed by glacial erosion. The combination of fjords with steep mountains and white glaciers created a unique kind of beauty along the Norwegian coast. 

Compared to other places at a similar latitude—such as Alaska or Greenland—Norway is much warmer because of the presence of the Gulf Stream. Therefore, fjords do not freeze even in winter and are an important conduit for transportation in the country. In summer, the scenery to the north of Norway, above the Arctic Circle, offers a great attraction because the sun never sets. That is why it is called the Land of the Midnight Sun! 

After our cottage break, Ramberg and I continued onto Follafoss. The village was next to a fjord but had no hotel, so we had to look for a suitable area to pitch a tent. The professor suggested that it would be better to pitch my tent in a farm near the coast because in the summer the forested area was full of midges, a type of gnat that is a real nuisance. They keep flying into one’s face and whirl overhead in a dark cloud. However, coastal areas were mostly free from these bugs. 

Ramberg chose a farm by the side of the fjord as the best place to pitch my tent. The farm owner’s name was also Ramberg, which was a common name in that area. I was asked to call him ‘Herr Ramberg’. After showing me around, the professor left that day. I felt a little bit lost after he was gone. Not sure where to start my work, I chose to study road cuts to get an idea of how rocks changed along road alignments. In addition to doing the geological and structural mapping of the area, I was also supposed to look for and trace a band of conglomerate, which is a particular rock type. 

There was a difference of opinion between Ramberg and another scholar regarding the origin of conglomerates. Ramberg thought that they were sedimentary and not of tectonic origin. A sedimentary origin would show a break in sedimentation, whereas a tectonic origin would indicate a fault or a thrust. Ramberg asked me to trace these conglomerate beds and ascertain their origin. 

I hardly saw anybody around when I was working and could do my job without any interference. Although it was nicer to work with a partner, I got used to working alone. Working in the forest was a pain because of the omnipresent midges, but fortunately I did not come across a snake after the first day.

On that occasion, Professor Ramberg took me to a hillock deep inside the forest to look at some rock features. He started to climb up the rock face but suddenly jumped back and shouted. He looked shaken. There had been a Rusell’s viper, a medium-sized brown snake, camouflaged behind a rock. He then warned me to be careful before touching rocks in the forest. Till then, I had thought that Scandinavian forests were free from snakes. I was obviously wrong. 

Extracted with permission from Sudipta Sengupta's Breaking Rocks and Barriers; published by HarperCollins.