Four years ago, when Akshay Nanavati—an Arizona-based former US Marine of Indian origin—told his Bengaluru-based mother that he planned to ski across Antarctica, her concern was simple: “Do they have good hotels there?” Once he stopped laughing, Akshay explained that he’d be staying in a tent and would have to walk four minutes just to reach the toilet. Though nervous, Anjali was not surprised to discover that her son wanted to glide across the coldest, driest and windiest continent on the planet. “He is a challenger,” she says about the 40-year-old. “He believes you must suffer to realize your true potential,” adds Anjali, whose son is on Day 29 of what’s—quite literally—a million-dollar dream: the world’s first solo, unsupported, coast-to-coast ski expedition of Antarctica.
“It’s the last great remaining unaccomplished feat in Antarctica that no one has attempted,” says his wife and pillar, Melissa, about the Great Soul Crossing, the name of Akshay’s 110-day journey across the ice-covered landmass where temperatures plummet to -40 degrees and hurricane-force winds prevail.With neither dogs nor kites for support, the adventure entails Akshay lugging a 189.9-kg sled across 1,700 miles of biting solitude.
The idea of the arduous, four-month adventure that began on Nov 8, Melissa says, emerged from “Akshay’s profound desire to explore the limits of human endurance and resilience”. Driven by a belief in “embracing chosen suffering as an access point to self-transcendence and growth,” Akshay, Melissa explains, “aims to bring back the wisdom from the edge of suffering and isolation to help others transcend their own suffering.”
“We created a monster,” concedes Anjali, who has watched her son grow from a boy who was afraid of Ferris wheels into a man who fiercely boxed punching bags. “He always needed some way to burn energy,” says Ajay, Akshay’s father, recalling his son’s penchant for swimming and running during his school days in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Singapore. A chemical engineer from a family of chemical engineers, Ajay frowned when Akshay announced his decision to join the US Marines. Deep in the grip of drugs and alcohol as a teenager, Akshay had watched a movie called ‘Black Hawk Down’, a Ridley Scott war film based on a true story that inspired his career choice.
Despite having a blood disorder that “two doctors said would kill him in Marine Corps boot camp”, Akshay ran many ultramarathons, including a 24-hour run. While serving in Iraq with the US Marines, he had to walk in front of their vehicles, looking for bombs. After recovering from PTSD induced by the job, Akshay spent ten days in isolation in a ‘darkness retreat’. He detailed his transformative journey in a book titled ‘Fearvana’, whose foreword was written by the Dalai Lama. “The Dalai Lama has never written a foreword for a personal book,” beams a proud Ajay.
Besides running 167 miles across Liberia to help build a school there, Akshay became one of only 26 people to ski up the remote Axel Heiberg Glacier in Antarctica before he was evacuated from this expedition due to frostbite. He lost two fingers in the bargain. One finger didn’t recover; the other did, but he had it preemptively removed because “once you get frostbite, you’re always more prone to it in the future,” says Melissa.
In 2022, he’d be found dragging tyres around the parks of Arizona to simulate pulling a heavy sled in preparation for the ongoing expedition. Sandbags replaced the tires when the couple flew to a cabin in Alaska, where Melissa watched her husband ski with sleds on a frozen lake for three months. To test his gear and fortitude in an environment similar to Antarctica, Akshay embarked on a 21-day solo expedition in Iceland. Later, the couple headed to Norway, where polar mentor Lars Ebbesen helped refine his skiing skills, gear prep, and route planning at an indoor cross-country ski center. Akshay also tested his diet in Greenland, where he discovered the weight-efficient diet plan was too high in fat, resulting in an evacuation.
After returning to Arizona, Akshay and Melissa refined his diet plan. “On average, Akshay is consuming 5,600 calories per day in Antarctica but will be burning 8,000 to 10,000 calories per day,” says Melissa who packed 960 packets of carefully curated food—freeze-dried eggs, pecans, nuts, jalapeño chips, mushroom risottos, and pad thai —even as he trained on a new stairmaster, sporting a high-altitude mask to simulate the climb.
Fundraising was its own uphill climb. “Akshay had to raise $ 1.1 million (roughly Rs 9 crore),” says Melissa, referring to the cost of logistics crowdfunded by friends, family, doctors, nutritionists and strangers. Before seeing him off at Chile, Melissa watched Akshay pack meticulously, weighing every piece of gear down to the gram. “He even cut his toothbrush in half to save grams,” she says.
Akshay now calls Melissa —who runs his social media–from a satellite phone every day. Though Anjali predicts she will be on edge once her son reaches the treacherous crevasses, it’s not just his meticulous training that makes her confident of his success: “He is no stranger to extreme highs and extreme lows.”
