Inspiring Explorers Expedition™: Antarctic Peninsula 2020
The opportunity to visit the Antarctic Peninsula has led Sadra Sultani to encourage the spirit of exploration in many other young people in her community.
The icy, remote landscape of the Antarctic couldn’t be more different from dusty, hot, wartorn Afghanistan, where Sadra Sultani was born and lived with her family until they came to New Zealand more than a decade ago.
Sadra, who is a Law and Politics students at the University of Canterbury, was incredibly excited to have the opportunity to step outside her comfort zone and explore this completely foreign environment as part of the Inspiring Explorers Expedition™.
She says every sense was heightened in the Antarctic. “We saw friendly penguins zooming and flipping in the water, elegant whales basking near our kayaks, and heard noises as loud as thunder when icebergs collapsed into the ocean, breaking the silence. I remember sitting on a cliff admiring the view and thinking how what we saw in photographs or on YouTube before the expedition, simply didn’t do justice to the beauty of Antarctica.”
Although she had competed at a national level in dragon boating and was part of a team of South Island Secondary Schools’ waka ama champions, Sadra had a fear of deep water, which made the polar plunge one of the biggest challenges she faced during the expedition.
“Muslim girls are not big swimmers as we have to stay fully covered in the water. Before I jumped, I was so scared, and couldn’t think straight for a second. But once I did it, I enjoyed it so much that I could have gone for a second round. I thought about the deep water sometimes when we were kayaking, as there was a chance of us flipping, but I knew I had so many people to support me. By the end of the expedition, I felt like I was born to do this.”
The expedition gave Sadra a different perspective on life, she says. “Through exploration we are educating ourselves, which affects the decisions we make. Places like Antarctica have such a profound impact on the climate and our ecosystem. It is even more important we explore these places because it helps us to learn ways to preserve our natural phenomena.”
Sadra is excited to go on new adventures and has been incredibly busy encouraging the spirit of exploration in other young people in the Muslim community. For her outreach programme she has run a series of online and in person workshops around the theme of exploration. She also led a Muslim Camp and organised a two-day conference for young Muslim women, which included a day of exploration activities.
“When I came back from Antarctica I was so inspired to do something as a leader in my community that would put exploration in their spectrum of choices and actually just understand the true essence of exploration,” said Sadra.
Sadra has worked hard to secure funding to organise expeditions for young Muslim women to experience the South Island so that they might experience stepping out of their comfort zone and grow their explorer mindset. She has been successfully funded to take three expeditions in 2023 with up to 20 participants on each trip.
Sadra is an active member of the Trust’s alumni community and has joined the Trust as a leader on its Young Inspiring Explorers™ events as well as sharing her story at stakeholder events.
One of the things Sadra enjoyed most about the expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula was the unpredictability of the experience. “What I realise now is that this whole time I thought I was dictating this journey but really it was the opposite. This journey was taking me along with it and teaching me so much along the way.”
“Through exploration we are educating ourselves, which affects the decisions we make. Places like Antarctica have such a profound impact on the climate and our ecosystem. It is even more important we explore these places because it helps us to learn ways to preserve our natural phenomena.”
