One of my fav Irish radio presenters was chatting on radio to Preet Chandi.
She had just skied more than 1,000km to reach the South Pole. Twelve to thirteen hours a day skiing, consuming 5,000 calories a day but still losing weight.
“She’d spent Christmas Day - as I was isolating with Covid and feeling sorry for myself-doing exactly this. She arrived triumphantly at the pole on December 28, having left on November 26.
“t was her third expedition to the Antarctic, one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. I wondered what on earth had driven her to take on such a challenge.”
Preet explained. “Well, they’d said I wasn’t bright enough to go to college and I set out to prove them wrong, and now I have a master’s. So I wanted an even bigger challenge and four years ago I googled ‘how to get to Antarctica’.”
– Tom Dunne, The Sunday Times in Ireland, 7 Jan 24)