Sanjay Austa

A Week in the Arctic

Alaskan Malamite Huskies draw a sledge in the Arctic forest.

(click on photos to go to gallery)

Northern Lights, Husky rides and a Nude Sauna: Adventures in the Arctic

Whenever I get an invitation to visit a cold place I am generally not too excited. I was born in the foothills of the Himalayas (Himachal Pradesh) therefore snow, mountains, and high altitudes  generate  feelings of home not wanderlust. But an  invitation to visit the Arctic is different. I have never crossed the 66 degree latitude for one and the opportunity to relive your childhood  storybook fantasies  of reindeers-rides and  huskies sledges  is too hard to resist.

And so I head to  Lapland, a province of Finland that falls entirely in the  Arctic region. Visiting Lapland when it is still snowbound is an overwhelming  high. Accustomed so far to see snow only in the high mountain passes and peaks,  it is interesting to see flat snowfields for miles around. I am not sure if   Santa Claus excites  me, though I am standing  in a queue with excited children for almost an hour waiting for one of Santa’s elves to show me in. The `official’ Santa Clause is remarkably the same rotund chubby- cheeked man from my childhood story books. He greets me a predictable namastay  and asks my colleagues if they have been good girls in a manner he would ask any naughty school girls who line up for hours to meet him. I am happy to get a picture with him to reinforce the Santa Clause legend in my  nieces and nephews.

Reindeer sledge ride. From the sledge all you can see is the narrow hump of the Reindeer and his flat hoofs. But the reindeers thankfully knows where they are going.

 The husky sledge ride is the  high-point of my  travel to the Arctic. Husky along with the reindeer sledge rides, I think denote the archetypal arctic  adventure.  These ferocious looking dogs, who have a wolf ancestry are surprisingly very  benign to humans.

Every home here has a sauna. The sauna experience is  new to me and I learn the hard way  that   it’s a bad idea to go in a sauna in your underwear if you are sharing it with  the Finns.  Its perfectly normal go  in the  nude otherwise  you stick out like a sore thumb with your jockey.

Getting the sledges ready for the Husky Ride.

Coming to Lapland and not witnessing the spectacle of the Northern Lights is  like coming to India and not seeing the Taj Mahal.   Northern Lights is  indeed a rare  phenomenon for any photographer to capture and  I am not so lucky. The cloudy weather does not let up but Jari our guide takes us to a Northern Light centre  where a genial lady gives us a presentation on Northern lights on a projector.

They have the screen  on the ceiling and I lie looking up at the swishing and  the swirling of the array of lights .  Lying there I dream of clear skies and lights and suddenly it dawns on me that   a photograph of  Northern Lights has been my screensaver on my Mac at home all along.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2012 at 10:48 pm. It is filed under Travelogues and tagged with arctic adventures images, arctic husky ride, arctic lapland, documentary photographer india, husky ride lapland, indian photographers, photographer in India, photographers in delhi, photojournalist delhi, photojournalist india, reindeer ride lapland, reindeer rides arctic, travel photographer in India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.