Class 12 English · Original EZT practice
Journey to the end of the Earth - Tishani Doshi (Class 12 English, Vistas, Chapter 3)
Journey to the end of the Earth is Chapter 3 of Class 12 Vistas (pp. 18-23), Tishani Doshi's first-person account of sailing to Antarctica aboard 'the Akademik Shokalskiy'. From Madras, '13.09 degrees north of the Equator', she crosses 'nine time zones, six checkpoints, three bodies of water' to reach 'the coldest, driest, windiest continent in the world' - and to read in its ice the planet's past, present and future. This page follows the journey, the science and the hope she brings home, with fresh practice questions. (Note: this is original practice, not a textbook exercise key.)
6 original worked examples, 6 fresh self-check questions and 4 mixed questions, with explained answers. These are not copied textbook exercises, an official chapter index or a full answer key. No affiliation with NCERT is claimed.
Official sources for topic and edition context, checked 25 October 2026:
1. The journey and the argument
The voyage: over 100 hours by car, aeroplane and ship to set foot on Antarctica; her first emotion before the 'expansive white landscape and uninterrupted blue horizon' is 'relief, followed up with an immediate and profound wonder'. Part of history: 'Six hundred and fifty million years ago, a giant amalgamated southern supercontinent - Gondwana - did indeed exist, centred roughly around the present-day Antarctica'; it thrived for 500 million years before separating 'around the time when the dinosaurs were wiped out'. To visit is 'to get a grasp of where we've come from and where we could possibly be heading' - 'Cordilleran folds and pre-Cambrian granite shields; ozone and carbon; evolution and extinction'. The making of today's world: 'India pushing northwards, jamming against Asia to buckle its crust and form the Himalayas'; South America drifting to North America, 'opening up the Drake Passage to create a cold circumpolar current, keeping Antarctica frigid'. The scale of the place: 'no trees, billboards, buildings'; 'midges and mites to blue whales and icebergs as big as countries (the largest recorded was the size of Belgium)'; 'surreal 24-hour austral summer light' and 'a ubiquitous silence' broken by 'the occasional avalanche or calving ice sheet'. Human impact: human civilisations have been around for what she calls a paltry span - 'barely a few seconds on the geological clock' - yet 'the unmitigated burning of fossil fuels' has created 'a blanket of carbon dioxide' that is warming the globe. Why Antarctica matters: it 'has never sustained a human population' and 'holds in its ice-cores half-million-year-old carbon records trapped in its layers of ice' - 'If we want to study and examine the Earth's past, present and future, Antarctica is the place to go.' Students on Ice: the programme, 'headed by Canadian Geoff Green', takes high school students south 'at an age when they're ready to absorb, learn, and most importantly, act' - 'the future generation of policy-makers'. Seeing 'glaciers retreating and ice shelves collapsing' makes the threat real. The parable of the phytoplankton: 'those grasses of the sea that nourish and sustain the entire Southern Ocean's food chain'; ozone depletion would hit them, then all marine life, then 'the global carbon cycle' - 'take care of the small things and the big things will fall into place'. Walk on the ocean: 'just short of the Antarctic Circle at 65.55 degrees south', 'all 52 of us, kitted out in Gore-Tex and glares', walking on 'a metre-thick ice pack' over '180 metres of living, breathing, salt water', with 'Crabeater seals' sunning on nearby floes - 'everything does indeed connect'. The close: 'a lot can happen in a million years, but what a difference a day makes!'
2. Theme
Deep time and human smallness: Gondwana, the Himalayas and the ice-cores put a few thousand years of civilisation in perspective - 'barely a few seconds on the geological clock'. Everything connects: phytoplankton to the food chain, ozone to the carbon cycle, a classroom of teenagers to the planet's future. Hope through the young: two weeks with 'a bunch of teenagers who still have the idealism to save the world' leaves the author hopeful.
3. Word meanings
'Gondwana': the ancient southern supercontinent centred near present-day Antarctica. 'Cordilleran folds and pre-Cambrian granite shields': mountain-chain folds and ancient rock formations - shorthand for the Earth's geological record. 'Austral summer light': the near-24-hour daylight of the Antarctic summer. 'Calving ice sheet': ice breaking away from a glacier's edge with a roar. 'Epiphanies': sudden moments of revelation - her walk on the ocean was one.
Choose, solve, check, then try a fresh question.
Before calculating, read the method prompt and name the condition that makes it useful. Write your own attempt. Open the steps only when you need them, and use the check to catch a wrong sign, unit or interpretation. Finish with the fresh question before reading its answer.
Board the Akademik Shokalskiy
Choose the method: Count the crossings.
EZT practice question
Which vessel carries the author to Antarctica, and where does her journey begin?
Show the worked solution
- The vessel: 'the Akademik Shokalskiy'.
- The start: Madras - '13.09 degrees north of the Equator'.
- The crossing: 'nine time zones, six checkpoints, three bodies of water' and over 100 hours by car, aeroplane and ship.
Answer: 'The Akademik Shokalskiy' - from Madras, '13.09 degrees north of the Equator'.
Check: The ship's name, the Madras start, the nine-time-zone crossing.
Watch for this: Do not skip the first emotion she records - before the white landscape it is 'relief, followed up with an immediate and profound wonder'.
Now try it yourself
Why does the author count time zones, checkpoints and bodies of water?
Check your answer
The tally makes Antarctica's remoteness measurable - you feel the distance in the arithmetic of getting there.
Numbers carry the journey better than adjectives.
Read the deep-time record
Choose the method: Supercontinent, then split.
EZT practice question
What was Gondwana, and how long did it thrive?
Show the worked solution
- The definition: 'a giant amalgamated southern supercontinent - Gondwana - did indeed exist, centred roughly around the present-day Antarctica'.
- The lifespan: it thrived for 500 million years.
- The end: it separated 'around the time when the dinosaurs were wiped out' - India pushed northwards, 'jamming against Asia to buckle its crust and form the Himalayas'.
Answer: 'A giant amalgamated southern supercontinent' centred around present-day Antarctica - it thrived for 500 million years.
Check: The supercontinent definition, the 500-million-year span, the breakup timing.
Watch for this: Do not treat Gondwana as legend - the chapter stresses it 'did indeed exist'; the point is evidence, not myth.
Now try it yourself
Why does a visit to Antarctica help us grasp 'where we've come from and where we could possibly be heading'?
Check your answer
Because its rocks and ice hold the planet's past climates and life - reading them projects the future from the record.
Deep time turns a white continent into a library.
Weigh the ice-cores
Choose the method: Ice volume, then records.
EZT practice question
How much of the Earth's ice is stored in Antarctica, and what records do its ice-cores hold?
Show the worked solution
- The volume: '90 per cent of the Earth's total ice volumes are stored' there.
- The records: it 'holds in its ice-cores half-million-year-old carbon records trapped in its layers of ice'.
- The conclusion: 'If we want to study and examine the Earth's past, present and future, Antarctica is the place to go.'
Answer: '90 per cent of the Earth's total ice volumes' - and 'half-million-year-old carbon records'.
Check: The 90-per-cent ice volume and the half-million-year carbon records.
Watch for this: Do not miss why the records matter: trapped carbon lets scientists read ancient atmospheres directly, layer by layer.
Now try it yourself
Why does the chapter stress that Antarctica 'has never sustained a human population'?
Check your answer
Because an untouched baseline makes its ice-cores a clean record - nature's archive without human edits.
Purity is what makes the evidence readable.
Meet the Students on Ice
Choose the method: Leader, then learners.
EZT practice question
Who heads Students on Ice, and whom does the programme take south?
Show the worked solution
- The leader: 'headed by Canadian Geoff Green'.
- The travellers: high school students, taken 'at an age when they're ready to absorb, learn, and most importantly, act'.
- The stake: they are 'the future generation of policy-makers' - seeing 'glaciers retreating and ice shelves collapsing' makes the threat real to them.
Answer: 'Canadian Geoff Green' - high school students, 'the future generation of policy-makers'.
Check: Geoff Green, the high-school cohort, the absorb-learn-act age.
Watch for this: Do not read the programme as tourism - the chapter frames it as training for the people who will write tomorrow's environmental policy.
Now try it yourself
Why take teenagers rather than scientists or officials?
Check your answer
Because they still have 'the idealism to save the world' - and decades ahead to act on what they saw.
The chapter invests its hope where time is longest.
Learn the parable of the phytoplankton
Choose the method: Small things first.
EZT practice question
What is the 'parable of the phytoplankton'?
Show the worked solution
- The organisms: 'those grasses of the sea that nourish and sustain the entire Southern Ocean's food chain'.
- The threat: ozone depletion would damage them first - then all marine life, then 'the global carbon cycle'.
- The moral: 'take care of the small things and the big things will fall into place'.
Answer: The microscopic 'grasses of the sea' sustain the Southern Ocean's food chain; harm them through ozone depletion and the whole chain - and the global carbon cycle - suffers.
Check: The grasses-of-the-sea image, the ozone-to-food-chain cascade, the small-things moral.
Watch for this: Do not file phytoplankton under trivia - the chapter makes microscopic life the load-bearing wall of the ocean's food chain.
Now try it yourself
How does the parable connect to the chapter's title about the end of the Earth?
Check your answer
The smallest organisms at the planet's end uphold systems that reach every ocean - the end of the Earth is wired into the whole.
In ecology, the small is the foundation, not the footnote.
Walk on the ocean
Choose the method: Ice above, water below.
EZT practice question
Describe the author's 'walk on the ocean'.
Show the worked solution
- The spot: 'just short of the Antarctic Circle at 65.55 degrees south', the ship wedged into pack ice.
- The walkers: 'all 52 of us, kitted out in Gore-Tex and glares', with 'Crabeater seals' sunning on nearby floes.
- The ground: 'a metre-thick ice pack' over '180 metres of living, breathing, salt water' - her greatest Antarctic revelation.
Answer: All 52 passengers, 'kitted out in Gore-Tex and glares', on 'a metre-thick ice pack' above '180 metres of living, breathing, salt water', just short of the Antarctic Circle at 65.55 degrees south.
Check: The 65.55-degree location, the 52 walkers, the metre-thick crust over 180 metres of ocean.
Watch for this: Do not picture solid ground - the whole point is standing on a frozen skin with a living ocean directly beneath.
Now try it yourself
Why does this walk produce her line 'everything does indeed connect'?
Check your answer
Standing between ice and ocean makes the planet's systems physically felt - one body poised on the link between two worlds.
The revelation lands because the connection is underfoot, not abstract.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. The vessel and the start?
Show answer and reason
'The Akademik Shokalskiy' - from Madras, '13.09 degrees north of the Equator'.
Nine time zones and 100 hours make remoteness measurable.
2. Gondwana in one line?
Show answer and reason
'A giant amalgamated southern supercontinent' that thrived for 500 million years.
Antarctica anchors the planet's deep-time record.
3. Why Antarctica for climate study?
Show answer and reason
'90 per cent of the Earth's total ice volumes' plus 'half-million-year-old carbon records' in its ice-cores.
An untouched archive of past atmospheres.
4. The parable's moral?
Show answer and reason
'Take care of the small things and the big things will fall into place.'
Phytoplankton uphold the food chain and the carbon cycle.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- In two sentences, explain how the Gondwana passage and the ice-core passage together support the claim that Antarctica holds 'the Earth's past, present and future'.
- Contrast 'a paltry' span of human civilisation with the 500 million years Gondwana thrived, and state the effect the contrast creates.
- Explain in your own words why the 'walk on the ocean' - not the glaciers or the science lectures - becomes the author's greatest revelation.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote Journey to the end of the Earth?
- Tishani Doshi. The chapter is her first-person account of an Antarctic expedition, and the book's acknowledgements credit The Hindu for the piece.
- What is Journey to the end of the Earth about?
- A writer sails from Madras to Antarctica and discovers that the frozen continent holds the keys to the planet's past, present and future - from Gondwana to climate change - and that school students may be its best hope.
- How were the Himalayas formed, according to the chapter?
- By 'India pushing northwards, jamming against Asia to buckle its crust' - one of the continental movements that shaped today's globe after Gondwana broke apart.
- What does the author mean by 'walk on the ocean'?
- Near the Antarctic Circle the ship wedged into pack ice, and the passengers climbed down to stand on a metre-thick frozen crust with 180 metres of salt water beneath - her greatest Antarctic revelation.
- Where is Journey to the end of the Earth in the Class 12 book?
- Chapter 3 of Vistas, the Class 12 English supplementary reader (pp. 18-23), by Tishani Doshi.