Army Chief Samudra Pradakshina honours came full circle in New Delhi on Tuesday, when Gen Dhiraj Seth received the nine women officers who sailed the globe aboard IASV Triveni, days after the tri-service crew brought the first all-women circumnavigation home to Mumbai. The Chief of the Army Staff met the officers in a marble hall of the capital, a glass-cased scale model of the sailing vessel standing between the two ranks of the crew.

Seth moved down the line one officer at a time, the crew drawn up in the service dress of the Army, Navy and Air Force they had carried around the world together. Behind them stood the expedition's homecoming banners, Triveni Returns Home on one side and Samudra Pradakshina on the other.

Nine officers, four oceans, 314 days

The crew sailed for 314 days without a break, covering nearly 25,500 nautical miles across four oceans. Nine officers crewed the boat, three services between them, making Samudra Pradakshina the first global circumnavigation India has sent to sea under an all-women crew.

Around the world, the hard way

The boat left Mumbai on 11 September 2025, flagged off over a video link by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. From there the crew took the classic circumnavigator's road: rounding the Three Great Capes, crossing the Equator twice and the International Date Line once, and passing through every line of longitude before turning for home. That course met the internationally accepted conditions for a full circumnavigation, and IDW covered the crew's arrival at the Gateway of India on 22 July, where veterans, senior commanders and the officers' families had gathered to receive them.

An Army boat, built to Indian design

IASV Triveni is the Indian Army's own sailing vessel, and its endurance over ten months at sea became part of the story the forces told about the voyage. At the flag-in, Singh held the boat up as proof of Indian engineering and indigenous capability, placing the vessel alongside the crew as the two things the expedition had tested to the limit.

The Defence Minister put jointness at the centre of his remarks. Capability multiplies when the three services coordinate, he said, and victory finds its own path when they march together.

The Army Chief Samudra Pradakshina welcome in a widening frontier

Tuesday's reception came as women's place in the uniformed services kept widening elsewhere. Only days earlier the Ministry of Defence had opened gender-neutral officer induction in the Coast Guard, throwing Short Service Appointments open to men and women on the same terms and putting women officers on equal footing for Permanent Appointments. A crew that had just steered an Army vessel around the planet made a fitting image for the direction of travel.

A new chief, a full diary

Gen Dhiraj Seth has kept a crowded public calendar since taking over as the 31st Chief of the Army Staff on 30 June. Two days before receiving the crew, he laid a wreath at the Kargil War Memorial in Dras on the 27th Kargil Vijay Diwas.

A voyage that doubled as diplomacy

Beyond the seamanship, Samudra Pradakshina worked as an instrument of military diplomacy. Through its port calls across the globe, IASV Triveni carried Indian cultural heritage and naval tradition into foreign harbours, and delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa joined the flag-in ceremony at Kartavya Bhavan-2 alongside the Chief of Defence Staff, the Chief of the Naval Staff and the Vice Chief of the Air Staff.

The Indian Army account carried Tuesday's reception with photographs of the crew and the Army Chief around the cased model of their boat.


The Army Chief Samudra Pradakshina reception this week closed a round of homecomings that had begun at the Gateway of India, ten months and 25,500 nautical miles after a video link and a boat pointed south. For the nine officers, it stood as the moment the service put its own crew forward as the face of what women in uniform can take on.