Kolkata: Satyarup Siddhanta, Everest climber and a Guinness record holder for being the youngest in the world to complete seven summits and seven volcanic summits, will set out for the North Pole expedition in a month. Last week, chief of the army staff general Upendra Dwivedi handed over the summit flag to him.

I have been trying to make it to the North Pole since 2019. When I reached Longyearbyen in Svalbard in Norway, our flights got cancelled. I was scheduled to board a Ukrainian flight, and it got cancelled. The tension between Ukraine and Russia had just started, and a portion of Ukrainian territory was declared as temporarily occupied territories,” Siddhanta said.

In the next two years, the Covid outbreak wreaked havoc worldwide. Siddhanta’s next attempt was in 2023, which got cancelled due to bad weather conditions. “In 2024, we were asked to take a different route through Russia and go via Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. This was a longer distance, and we would have to take the Khatanga-Barneo (ice camp) route. But weather turned unfavourable again and the runway at Barneo got damaged,” he said.

Siddhanta, this time, will take the arduous ski route to reach the 90 degrees North. “I will reach Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway first. It is the world’s northernmost settlement,” Siddhanta said. From there, he will first reach the Barneo ice camp — a Swiss-owned and Russian-operated drift station on the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole. He will then head towards the 89 degrees North. Scientists, who go to the North Pole, take a helicopter from the Barneo.

Siddhanta will start to ski from 89 degrees North to the 90 degrees North, covering nearly 111 km. Popularly known as the “last degree” of latitude, it is a difficult trek with a zigzag route. “It will take around 11 days to cover the “last degree,” and we will fly back from the 90 degrees,” he said.