'Saare jahaan se achcha': How Shubhanshu Shukla saw India from space for the first time

New Delhi: “I saw India from space after three days. It was a night pass. We were coming from the ocean side, which was all dark and then the entire peninsula lit up. That sight left a mark on me,” - this is how Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla on Thursday described his first look at the homeland from his pad 400 km above the Earth.

The astronaut said his body took 3-4 days to get adjusted to microgravity, but on his return to earth, it took him almost seven days to get re-adjusted to the gravity environment.

In his first media interaction after coming back to India, he shared nuggets of his life during the 18-day stay at the International Space Station – the first Indian to do so – and pointed out that he and his fellow astronauts were screaming like school kids during the ascent.

What does India look like from space? “For the first three days I did not see outside the window at all...then a NASA crew told me about a pass over India...It was a night pass and it was dark. I became so emotional when I saw it for the first time. We came from the south, it was all ocean and dark and then suddenly I saw the peninsula, the triangular shape of our country and it was all lit up and in all its glory. It was the most beautiful sight.”

He said India looks "saare jahaan se achcha (better than the entire world)" even today -- words first used by India’s first astronaut Rakesh Sharma after his space mission in 1984.

Indian Space Research Organisation’s chairman V Narayanan said Group Captain Shukla’s experiences have been documented in 4,000 pages that would be useful for the Gaganyaan mission and building the modules of Bharatiya Antriksh Station.

How did he manage to sleep, while experiencing 16 sunrises and sunsets a day. Shukla said GMT was followed in the ISS to divide the work and sleep time and there were specific places where one could sleep after closing down the windows.

“But it is difficult to sleep as the view is too beautiful. You want to sit by the window and not sleep. You have to force yourself to sleep,” he said, responding to a question from DH.

Group Captain Shukla, an Indian Air Force combat pilot who also met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday, said the concept of border lost its meaning from space as they didn’t seem to exist. He also asserted that there were no anxious moments as the strategy was to understand and mitigate the risks.

What did he miss the most in space? “We need more Indian food in space. The taste buds were not the same in space. After returning I told my wife I would eat anything that you make and she said, wow finally it took you to go to space to eat my food,” the astronaut quipped.