New Delhi: The defence minister, Rajnath Singh, flagged in “Samudra Pradakshina”, the first triservice all-women circumnavigation sailing expedition, as the crew returned to Mumbai after a 314-day voyage covering nearly 25,500 nautical miles across four oceans on Wednesday. Nine women officers drawn from the Indian Army, Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force sailed the indigenously built Indian Army Sailing Vessel (IASV) Triveni on the voyage, which Singh had virtually flagged off from the Gateway of India on September 11 last year.
He addressed Wednesday’s homecoming ceremony by video conference from Kartavya Bhavan-2 in New Delhi.
The expedition satisfied the internationally recognized criteria for a circumnavigation under sail, crossing all meridians of longitude, crossing the equator twice, crossing the international date line and rounding the three great capes – Cape Leeuwin, Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.
Passage through the Drake Passage and the rounding of Cape Horn – among the most demanding stretches of water for any sailor – earned the crew membership of the Cape Horners, a fraternity historically reserved for those who have completed the route under sail. Port calls took in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa, and the vessel’s arrival in each country doubled as an exercise in defence outreach, with Indian missions abroad using the stopovers to engage local officials and communities.
Singh called the completion of the voyage a demonstration of women’s capability, triservice jointness and self-reliant defence manufacturing under the Atmanirbhar Bharat programme. He said the crew’s achievement showed that human resolve could outlast any storm, and that the officers had, in his words, been writing themselves into the country’s history.
He argued that the voyage’s significance extended beyond seamanship. At a time when militaries worldwide are debating integrated commands and multi-domain operations, he said, the expedition offered a working example of what coordinated planning across three services could achieve. Officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force lived, trained and sailed together for more than ten months, an arrangement the ministry has previously said was intended to build interoperability rather than simply complete a long voyage.
Singh also described the 50-foot vessel, built in Puducherry, as evidence of India’s shipbuilding and design capability, calling it a mark of engineering competence and strategic self-confidence.
Samudra Pradakshina builds on a decade of Indian round-the-world sailing. The Navy’s INSV Tarini completed the all-women Navika Sagar Parikrama in 2017-18, and a second edition of that voyage followed in 2024-25. Individual sailors preceded both: Captain Dilip Donde completed India’s first solo circumnavigation in 2009-10, and Commander Abhilash Tomy the first solo non-stop circumnavigation in 2012-13. Samudra Pradakshina is the first such voyage to draw its crew from all three armed services rather than the Navy alone.
The nine officers were selected from a pool of volunteers after roughly two years of training in ocean sailing, navigation and survival skills, supported by a round-the-clock shore-based coordination network for the duration of the voyage. Reports from earlier stages of the expedition have said the crew also gathered oceanographic data in collaboration with the National Institute of Oceanography, covering marine ecosystems and microplastic pollution, alongside the primary sailing mission.
The New Delhi ceremony was attended by the chief of defence staff, General NS Raja Subramani; the chief of the naval staff, Admiral Krishna Swaminathan; the chief of the Army staff, General Dhiraj Seth; the vice chief of the air staff, Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit; and the director general integrated training, Lieutenant General Ajay Ramdev; along with defence delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa.
In Mumbai, the general officer commanding in chief (GOC-in-C) of Southern Command, Lieutenant General Rajesh Pushkar; the chief of staff of Western Naval Command, Vice Admiral Rahul Vilas Gokhale; the air officer commanding in chief (AOC-in-C) of South Western Air Command, Air Marshal PV Shivanand; the deputy chief of Army staff, Lieutenant General Vipul Singhal joined veterans and family members at the Gateway of India to receive the crew.