It felt like I had stepped onto another planet.
The ground beneath my feet was coated in layers of shining frost, and the air had a silence to it—a kind of stillness that made every breath feel sacred. For a moment, I truly believed I had left Earth altogether and arrived on some distant ice-covered world, untouched and waiting to be discovered. But with every slow step forward, the realization came: this was not a planet far away in space—it was the South Pole of our own Earth.
A place so far removed from the world I knew that it may as well have been alien.
My fellow traveler stood beside me, eyes fixed on a towering mountain that loomed ahead like a frozen giant carved out of time itself.
“I’ve never seen a mountain like this,” he whispered, almost to himself. “Not like the Himalayas. Not like the Dolomites in Italy. It’s… different.”
He was right. This mountain didn’t fit into any known category. It had no green terraces, no trees clinging to its slopes. The soil was strange—dark, almost black in some places, light brown in others, like scattered ash from an ancient fire, layered with thin, sparkling crystals. Its geology didn’t resemble the volcanic rock of Iceland, nor the rugged peaks of Patagonia. It was something else—primeval, raw, untouched by human ambition.
The sunlight—pale and low on the horizon—bounced off the ground in sharp, dazzling fragments. It wasn’t a harsh light. It was cold and clean, like the glint of starlight on glass. The ice shimmered in blues and silvers and faint purples, creating a landscape that seemed to shift in color as I moved.
In the distance, I noticed several figures slowly crossing the frozen ground. They were bundled in colorful coats—crimson, turquoise, yellow—tiny moving dots against the vast white plain. Their movement was slow, deliberate. You can’t rush in a place like this. Every step must be taken with care. The ice beneath your boots speaks in creaks and crackles, reminding you that nature has its own rhythm, and it’s not to be hurried.
To truly understand this place, you must come here.
No photograph can capture the way the cold wraps around you like a second skin, or how your heart beats louder when you stand before that ancient mountain. You have to feel the crunch of snow under your boots, breathe the sharp, crystalline air, and hear the silence that echoes louder than any noise in a city.
And yet, despite the harsh beauty, comfort is not far away. Scattered in protected hollows are a few warm, welcoming houses. Small lodges made for those brave enough to journey here. They’re cozy, heated, and built with windows wide enough to let the magic of the night sky pour in.
At night, the sky opens up like a curtain, revealing the southern stars, distant and bright, dancing with pale auroras. Sitting by the window, wrapped in warmth, with a cup of hot tea in your hand, you begin to understand what few people ever will: this place, this cold, glittering end of the Earth, holds a beauty so vast, so otherworldly, it can change the way you see the world forever.
