⛵ Explorers and voyages
Bharat’s own sailors — from Lothal’s dockyard to Rajendra Chola’s navy and the Sadhabas of Odisha — the pilgrims who crossed Asia, the voyages that joined the world, and India’s modern explorers on Everest, in Antarctica and in space.
Maps show India’s boundaries as officially depicted by the Government of India. Pins mark approximate locations.
⛵ Bharat goes to sea
Five thousand years of Indian ships — the dockyard at Lothal, ports where sea routes began, Satavahana coins with ships on them, the Chola navy and the Sadhabas of Odisha.
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Harappan civilisation
Lothal’s dockyard
Lothal, in Gujarat, had a huge dockyard, and Harappan seals show ships and boats — some of the oldest evidence of Indian seafaring.
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Ports where sea routes began
Some early towns, such as Puhar on the Kaveri delta, stood near the coast, and sea routes began from them.
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Ships on Satavahana coins
Many Satavahana coins show ships, which suggests that sea trade was an important part of economic life; their trade networks reached as far as the Roman Empire.
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Gupta era
Indian traders on Socotra
In the Gupta era India traded with the Mediterranean world, Southeast Asia and China. Socotra Island in the Arabian Sea was a stop on the way to the Mediterranean markets, and finds there show Indian traders over several centuries.
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c. 4th century CE
A script carried across the sea
India spread her traditions peacefully through trade, pilgrimage and culture. Around the 4th century CE, the region of present-day Malaysia adopted a script based on India’s Brahmi.
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1025
Rajendra Chola’s naval expedition
Under the Cholas, trade with China thrived. One sea route ran through the Strait of Malacca, controlled by Shrivijaya; Rajendra Chola sent a naval expedition to Southeast Asia — a punitive expedition, with the support of many Indian merchant guilds.
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Every Kartika Purnima
Bali Jatra: the voyages of the Sadhabas
Odisha’s largest open-air cultural festival, held on the banks of the Mahanadi in Cuttack from Kartika Purnima, remembers the voyages of Odia traders — the Sadhabas — to Bali, Java, Sumatra and Borneo.
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Early 18th century
Kanhoji Angre and the Maratha navy
Europeans forced Indian ships to buy naval passes. Under Kanhoji Angre the Marathas won many naval battles and began demanding passes from the Europeans themselves.
☸ Monks, pilgrims and travellers
The roads and sea lanes that carried the Buddha’s message out of India — and the travellers who came the other way and wrote about what they saw.
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The Buddha’s message crosses the seas
The Buddha’s message spread through Central Asia to China, Korea and Japan, and through Sri Lanka across the seas to Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia.
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399
Fa Xian comes from China
The Chinese Buddhist monk Fa Xian travelled from China to India around the fifth century CE in search of Buddhist texts.
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7th century CE
Xuan Zang and Nalanda
The Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang came in search of Buddhist texts. Most of what we know about Nalanda comes from his records.
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Late 13th century
Marco Polo
Marco Polo (1254–1323), from Italy, visited China — and also India — from his home in Venice in the late thirteenth century.
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1333–1354
Ibn Battuta: from Tangier to Delhi and China
The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, born in Tangier, reached Sind in 1333. In 1342 the Sultan of Delhi sent him to China as his envoy; he returned home in 1354.
🧭 Voyages that joined the world
Europe’s sailors reach the Americas and India, Cook sails around Antarctica, Darwin sets out for the Galapagos, and Amundsen reaches the South Pole.
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1492
Columbus reaches the West Indies
Sailing west from Spain, Columbus reached the West Indies in 1492.
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May 1498
Vasco da Gama reaches India
Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498, landing at Kappad near Kozhikode (Calicut) — the first sea voyage from Europe to India around Africa.
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1510
The Portuguese take Goa
The Portuguese captured strategic ports, including Goa in 1510, and with their passes for ships they controlled the spice trade between India and Europe for nearly a century.
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1772–75
Captain Cook sails around Antarctica
Until the 17th century most explorers thought a voyage to Antarctica next to impossible. Captain James Cook circumnavigated the continent in 1772–75.
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1831
Darwin sails for the Galapagos
Charles Darwin set out on a voyage to the Pacific and the Galapagos Islands in 1831 — the voyage that led to his theory of evolution.
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1911
Amundsen reaches the South Pole
In 1911 the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Only three weeks later the British explorer Robert F. Scott also reached it, but at the cost of his life.
🏔 To the top of the world
Everest in 1953, the first Indian team on top in 1965, and the Indian women who went first — up the mountain and across the sea.
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29 May 1953
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary on Everest
Tenzing Norgay had been to Everest six times before he succeeded on his seventh attempt: as a member of the British expedition of 1953, he made the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain with Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953.
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4 November 1954
The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute
The ascent of Everest gave the impetus for mountaineering to grow as an organised sport in India. The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute was founded in Darjeeling, Tenzing’s home town, on 4 November 1954, and Tenzing was its Director of Field Training.
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1965
Nawang Gombu: Everest twice
Nawang Gombu was the first person to reach the top of Everest twice — with an American team in 1963 and again with the Indian Everest Expedition of 1965.
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23 May 1984
Bachendri Pal: the first Indian woman on Everest
The expedition had 6 women and 11 men; Bachendri Pal was the only woman in her group to carry on, and she reached the summit on 23 May 1984 at 1:07 pm.
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Arunima Sinha
Arunima Sinha, who lost her left leg in 2011, became the first differently abled woman to climb Everest, and has unfurled India’s flag on five peaks: Everest, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Kosciuszko and Aconcagua.
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2011–2017
Anshu Jamsenpa: Everest five times
Anshu Jamsenpa, from Bomdila in Arunachal Pradesh, was the first Indian woman to scale Everest five times — twice in ten days in 2011, again in 2013, and a double ascent in May 2017.
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1959
Arati Saha swims the English Channel
Arati Saha was the first Indian woman to swim across the English Channel — and the first Asian woman to do so — in 1959. In 1960 she became the first woman in India to receive the Padma Shri.
❄ India in Antarctica
From the first Indian steps on the ice in 1981 to two year-round research stations and a drive to the South Pole.
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1981
The first Indian steps in Antarctica
Indian scientists took their first steps on the frozen continent of Antarctica in 1981. The programme’s first station was Dakshin Gangotri, where Indians first spent a winter.
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Aditi Pant
The oceanographer Aditi Pant was the first Indian woman to reach Antarctica, and was given the Antarctica Award for being part of the expedition.
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1988
Maitri
In 1988 an ice-free, rocky area on the Schirmacher oasis was chosen for India’s second research station, Maitri — built on steel stilts, about 100 km from the shore.
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21 November 2010
The first Indian expedition to the South Pole
To mark thirty years of Indian presence in Antarctica, an eight-member team drove from Maitri, covering 2,300 km in nine days and reaching the South Pole on 21 November 2010.
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18 March 2012
Bharati
About 3,000 km east of Maitri, India’s newest research base, Bharati, was commissioned on 18 March 2012 for year-round research; it can hold 47 people in its main building.
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2015
Bhakti Sharma in Antarctic waters
In 2015 Bhakti Sharma set a world record by swimming 2.28 km in the Antarctic Ocean in 41.14 minutes — the youngest person and the first Asian woman to do so.
🚀 Into space
The first steps on the Moon, the first Indian in space, India’s mission to the Moon’s south pole, and the first Indian on the International Space Station.
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1969
Astronauts on the Moon
US astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969.
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1984
Rakesh Sharma: the first Indian in space
Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian astronaut to go into space in 1984, aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-11 mission.
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22 July 2019
Chandrayaan-2 sets out for the Moon’s south pole
Launched on 22 July 2019, Chandrayaan-2 carried an orbiter, a lander and a rover to explore the unexplored south pole of the Moon; it entered lunar orbit on 20 August 2019.
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26 June 2025
Shubhanshu Shukla on the International Space Station
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Air Force, pilot of the Axiom-4 mission, became the first Indian to reach the International Space Station — and the second Indian in space, 41 years after Rakesh Sharma.
How we check: the history cards use NCERT’s own words; Everest is from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling; women’s firsts from the Press Information Bureau; Antarctica from the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research; space from NCERT, All India Radio News and ISRO; Bali Jatra from Incredible India (Ministry of Tourism). Every phrase is found in its source when the page is built.