In stark contrast to where I grew up—in warm, lush green Trivandrum, Kerala, filled with rich sights, sounds, and people—life at the Poles is quiet. The harshness of winter brings along with it an eerie desolation and near-total silence. Survival in this frigid, dark, and windy terrain is only for the fittest. A misstep can mean anything from an icy injury to a bitter, benumbed death.

But while it is tenuous, life here is also humbling—physically, mentally, and even spiritually. The experience has allowed me to witness the wonderous dualities of nature: raw, brutal, and unforgiving but nurturing and awe-inspiring at the same time.

As the days shorten, almost all life starts to depart, seeking warmer lands. But those who stay are surrounded by glacial beauty and an otherworldly stillness that stands unmatched. In peak winter months, the sun seems to live only in memory. Its absence, however, is only an illusion: shimmering displays of blue, red, yellow, green, and orange auroras shifting and snaking like billowing curtains across the pitch-black sky remind me that the light shall one day return.

Even the emptiness of the land is deceptive. Look closely, and out waddles a flock of penguins from behind an ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.