From the East Midlands a British sikh army officer has become the first woman of colour to ski on a solo expedition to the South Pole.<\/p>\n
Preet Chandi, 32, from Derby, had completed the 700 mile trek in 40 days, having fought temperatures in Antarctica\u00a0as low as -50c and wind speeds as high as 60mph.<\/p>\n
Chandi, said she hoped her journey would inspire people to challenge cultural norms and push young people, women and those from ethnic backgrounds.<\/p>\n
“No-matter where you are from or where your start line is, everybody starts somewhere,” the army officer wrote in a blog post.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to just break the glass ceiling; I want to smash it into a million pieces.<\/p>\n
Chandi began her expedition on November 7, 2021, embarking from Antarctica’s Hercules Inlet.<\/p>\n
She spent two and a half years of intense training for the epic journey, including trekking across Iceland’s Langj\u00f6kull Glacier, and nearly a month spent on the ice cap in Greenland, where she fought extreme weather.<\/p>\n
The physical preparation would come in handy as the army officer had to haul a 90kg sleigh carrying 45 days\u2019 worth of fuel, kit and food around in freezing conditions while skiing<\/p>\n
Chandi had a team who posted updates on her blog, which acted as a link between her and the outside world.<\/p>\n
Her posts described the worst conditions she encountered, including poor visibility, uphill slogs and icy terrain, as well as personal thoughts.<\/p>\n
In one entry, she recounts having eggs thrown at her as a teenager because she “looked different”<\/p>\n
“I used to be embarrassed, having eggs thrown at me and people spit at me when I was a teenager because I ‘looked different’ certainly didn\u2019t help,” she wrote.<\/p>\n
“It took me a while to appreciate my culture and my roots, so when I describe myself as a ‘woman of colour’ it is because I am finally proud of my skin colour, my roots, my culture.”<\/p>\n
“Having been told on many occasions that I don\u2019t look like a polar explorer\u2026 lets change the image you expect to see.”<\/p>\n
On her return Chandi is using half of the funds raised for her trip to plan an adventure grant for women conducting “unusual challenges”, which she plans to launch this year.<\/p>\n
Money from the funds will also go to Khalsa Aid, an international charity which provides humanitarian aid in disaster areas and conflict zones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the East Midlands a British sikh army officer has become the first woman of colour to ski on a solo expedition to the South Pole. Preet Chandi, 32, from Derby, had completed the 700 mile trek in 40 days, having fought temperatures in Antarctica\u00a0as low as -50c and wind speeds as high as 60mph. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,38,3,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-national-news","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}