This Woman Swum Across Five Oceans!

Meet Bhakti Sharma, Open-Water Swimmer.

She's swum across all the five oceans of the world, and is the youngest woman in the world (not to mention the first Asian woman ever) to set a record swimming in the open waters of the Antarctic! And the degree of intense training Bhakti underwent to do it ("putting 15-20 tonnes of ice in a small swimming pool every night and swimming in it the next morning—so the temperature of water was about 3-4 degrees!") will blow your mind. Clearly a prodigy from the start, Bhakti started swimming at age 2, (coached by her mother Leena Sharma) and made waves—literally—with her accomplishments in her adolescence. 

"I was 16 when I swam across the English Channel in around 14 hours. At one point, I was stuck in a current for one and a half hours. They considered ending my swim, but I still didn't quit. I also won a 26km marathon swim in Lake Zurich." We should also mention that these are just two of the several amazing records Bhakti has broken—including swimming 25km in the Gulf of Mexico, and crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean Sea! It's been a challenge, especially, because open-water swimming barely has any forerunners to look to for guidance in the country, but "I try to keep learning," she says, "and keep giving it all I've got."  ​