Defence Minister Rajnath Singh felicitated the Samudra Pradakshina crew in New Delhi on Thursday, welcoming home the nine women officers of the three Services who had sailed nearly 25,500 nautical miles aboard the Indian Army Sailing Vessel Triveni. Their circumnavigation, the first ever attempted by an all-women Tri-service crew, ran 314 days across four oceans.

He praised their courage and their refusal to quit.

The officers, four from the Indian Air Force, four from the Indian Army and one from the Indian Navy, described the passage as demanding and, for that reason, both memorable and rewarding. They told the Defence Minister that a shared wish to make the country proud carried them through the physical and mental strain of ten months at sea. Rajnath Singh said their account had steadied his own resolve, and that firm conviction and determination let a person reach any goal in life.

Inside the Rajnath Singh Samudra Pradakshina felicitation

Rajnath Singh called the crew's capability and confidence incredible. The completion of the Samudra Pradakshina expedition, he said, had broken the old claim that women cannot take on hard military missions.

He put it to the officers plainly. They had shown, in his words, that "physical capability, mental toughness, and leadership qualities are not bound by gender." Every daughter in the country, he added, could look at them and believe that she too could cross oceans and conquer the world.


Tri-service jointness on one vessel

The Defence Minister came back more than once to the makeup of the crew. Officers of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force had crewed the same vessel under a single flag toward one aim, he noted, calling the result proof that "no horizon is too vast to conquer if we move forward together." The point mattered to him because the three Services rarely put their people on one small boat for the better part of a year.

Chief of the Army Staff Gen Dhiraj Seth attended the felicitation, having met the same crew in the capital a little over a week earlier. Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh was present. So were Vice Chief of the Air Staff Air Mshl Ashutosh Dixit and Vice Chief of the Naval Staff Vice Adm Ajay Kochhar, the two Vice Chiefs representing the Navy and the Air Force alongside the Army chief, with other senior officers of all three Services in the room. The Air Force had already marked the homecoming in its own interaction with the crew a day after the Army chief's.

A message aimed beyond the deck

Rajnath Singh also tied the voyage to the country's standing abroad. During its port calls the crew had put India's engineering, its indigenous capabilities and its technology in front of the nations it visited, and he commended them for it. He told the officers they had carried a message that "India is second to none in any field." The port calls, in that framing, set Indian officers and Indian-built systems in front of foreign audiences in a single view.

A 314 day voyage across four oceans

The Samudra Pradakshina voyage met every recognised mark of a true circumnavigation. IASV Triveni crossed all meridians of longitude, cut the Equator twice, ran over the International Date Line and rounded the Three Great Capes, Cape Leeuwin, Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.

The Drake Passage and the Cape Horners

The hardest stretch lay at the bottom of the world. Clearing the formidable Drake Passage and rounding Cape Horn brought the crew into the fraternity of Cape Horners, a circle open only to the sailors who take on one of the sea's most punishing routes. Membership there is earned, not granted, and the nine officers earned it in some of the worst water a sailing boat can meet.

From flag-off to homecoming

The road to the felicitation was long. Rajnath Singh had graced the flag-off on September 11, 2025 by video conferencing, and he flagged the crew in virtually on July 22, 2026 as Triveni reached Mumbai, where the officers stepped ashore at the Gateway of India. Nearly two years of intensive training sat behind the sail. A shore-based