Wild Encounter not so wild
The other day while talking to a friend, I am not sure how our conversation turned to polar bears and Arctic. My friend wanted to know if I had any close calls with a polar bear, which we often refer as the most dangerous predator on planet. I have had several, I mumbled, but she insisted if any of them were funny. I wondered, funny for whom, me or the bear! That’s a million dollar question. And then it came to me, a really silly wild encounter on a very commonplace evening, what made it funny for me that I wasn’t even trying anything remotely adventurous or risky. It was just the place and the timing and I happened to be at the right place at the wrong time. Here is the story that I related to my friend. The year might have been 2008 in the middle of January I found myself in a place that only an insane would venture at that time of the year. No need to explain why, to me it seemed rather natural. The place was the capital of Svalbard, Longyearbyen. The northernmost a...