Kazakhs at home and abroad are planning all sorts of events on December 16 to mark the 20th anniversary of independence. Many will be elaborate and festive, but few will be as daring, or downright cold, as the plans of a group of adventurers determined to plant Kazakhstan's flag at the South Pole.

Nurlan Abduov, an Almaty-based business leader who founded the Kazakh Geographic Society last year, and seven others will race 1,300 miles to the pole in three specially modified sport-utility vehicles from Russia's Antarctic base of Novolazarevskaya.

The group's two Toyota Hiluxes and single Toyota Prado SUVs, which are painted the same sky blue as Kazakhstan's flag, boast modified diesel engines that can operate in extremely cold weather. They also have extra heating for the passengers, and feature sturdier transmissions and reinforced frames and suspension mounts.

The vehicles are also outfitted with radar that can scan ahead for hazards, including ice caves – holes below the snow and ice that can't be seen from the surface.

The SUVs will carry an array of safety equipment, including a wench that can lower straps to any expedition members who plunge into a crevasse.

Former Army Captain Sergey Bodrov, the project director responsible for the team's safety, has trained on glaciers in Iceland to handle contingencies that might arise during the South Pole expedition.

The elevation during the team's journey will range from 400 to 3,600 meters. The South Pole itself sits on a 2,800-meter plateau.

"The most dangerous areas," in terms of terrain, "will be in the mountains, where the glaciers are," said Kazakhstan's Konstantin Orlov, the project director in charge of vehicles and navigation. That's where crevasses and ice caves can form. Orlov was part of a 2010 trial run to the pole.

This year's group will be relying on Orlov to overcome any mechanical difficulties they encounter. The engineer said he's not an expert mechanic, but always figures out a way to keep a vehicle going.

The only mechanical problems that arose during last year's trial run, Orlov said, were shock-absorber difficulties and trouble pumping diesel from exterior tanks into the SUVs' fuel tanks. That run occurred during good weather, however.

The excitement the project has generated in Kazakhstan has prompted the team to draw up plans to enable those back home to follow the progress of the race to the pole.

Expedition members plan daily reports for Kazakhstan radio stations. They're also working on a way to allow the public to use the Internet to track their progress in real time. An Internet connection would mean team members could blog or send Twitter reports as they go, Abduov added.

During the race, team members will take part in an international celebration at the United States' Amundsen-Scott Antarctic research station to mark the 100th anniversary of the first expeditions to reach the South Pole.

The events will salute Norway's Roald Amundsen, who arrived at the pole on December 14, 1911, and Britain's Robert F. Scott, who reached it a few weeks later.

The Kazakh team will donate the flag they plant at the pole and copies of Kazakhstan's Declaration of Sovereignty and Constitution that they will take to the Antarctic to the Museum of the First President in Astana. It honors Nursultan Nazarbayev, independent Kazakhstan's first and current head of state.

Abduov said that in addition to trumpeting Kazakhstan's independence, the team hopes the month-long expedition will "show the world that Kazakhstan is not only about oil and gas and raw materials" but also about people with the skills to carry out meaningful exploration and science projects.

Geographic societies in Britain, the United States and Russia have been around more than a century, Abduov pointed out. And though Kazakhstan's Geographic Society is brand-new, its members are eager to earn the respect of the international geographic-society community with projects that increase the world's knowledge of geography, ethnology and other disciplines, he said.

Besides the eight team members racing to the pole, the expedition will include two scientists conducting research projects at the Novolazarevskaya base, said Abduov, who is the Kazakh Geographic Society board chairman. The team is still formulating the projects, but a key focus will be climate.

As school children, we learned that "Antarctica creates the weather for the entire world," said Ordenbek Mazbayev, a member of the Kazakh Geographic Society Academic Council. "It's the weather kitchen." So the expedition's research is certain to deal with "the ecological condition of this continent," he said.

The scientists will be obtaining samples of the air, snow and ice of Antarctica as part of their research, Abduov said. The samples will be taken back to Kazakhstan for evaluation.

The Kazakh Geographic Society takes its role of increasing scientific knowledge so seriously that it plans to set aside funds for research projects that would otherwise go unfunded, said Naizabek Olzhabaiuly, a society board member.

"We're ready to work with scientists who don't have (financial) support," he said. "They can apply to the Scientific Committee of the Kazakh Geographic Society."

Abduov hopes the two scientists on this year's expedition to the Antarctic aren't the only ones generating scientific knowledge. The sport-utility contingent hopes to uncover its own secrets on its trip to the pole, he said. "Who knows what discoveries are possible" during the trip, said Abduov, whose wide-ranging business interests include being a board member of both Intergas Central Asia and KazMunaiGas Refining and Marketing.

A trial run of the dash to the pole last year yielded valuable information that has changed the way Antarctic operations think about rescuing explorers and scientists who become trapped inland, Abduov said.

Orlov and Stanislav Makarenko were part of a Kazakh-Russian team that in 2010 set an overland speed record between the Novolazarevskaya base and the South Pole. They didn't just break the record – they shattered it, halving the time from 7 to 3.5 days.

Because chances are high that a trapped or injured explorer will die before seven days are up, most rescue operations in the Antarctic have been by plane. But planes can't fly in bad weather – and the Antarctic can have days of blizzards, gale-force winds and temperatures between -40 and -60 Centigrade.

A car can get through bad weather. And if it can make the pole in three and a half days, it becomes a viable rescue alternative to a plane. So Russia's Antarctic operation, in particular, is drawing up an overland-rescue contingency plan.

The seed was set for a Kazakhstan South Pole expedition when Abduov, Orlov and other Kazakh motocross enthusiasts competed in the grueling 11,000-mile Expedition Trophy race between Murmansk in northwestern Russia and Vladivostok on Russia's eastern Pacific coast in 2008.

"We decided it was not enough to run in races like this as individuals," Abduov said. "We decided to create a Kazakh Geographic Society."

The first project the society dreamed up was the South Pole expedition, which will combine many members' love of off-road vehicle racing with Kazakhstan's 20th anniversary celebration and the country's quest to become a force in international science.

The expedition will run from late November to late December. Corporations and individuals will contribute most of the funding.

The eight expedition members in the cars will then have to make it back to the Novolazarevskaya base by December 22, six days after planting the flag at the pole, Abduov said.

The last flight of the year from the base to the outside world leaves December 22. If the team misses it, they'll have to wait until January 20 of 2012 for the next plane. Either way, the journey will mark an adventurous milestone for the racers and the country.