What’s the best way to celebrate a milestone birthday? Take a trip with your girl gang à la Shabana Azmi. The veteran actor returned from a trip to Iceland with her close friends, ahead of her 75th birthday on September 18. “We wanted to see the Northern Lights in Iceland for years,” she says. 

This year, the group — which comprises Azmi’s school and college friends, and calls itself Carpe Diem — decided to tick it off their bucket list. The trip doubled up as the actor’s advance birthday celebration. “We walked 50 minutes through the largest glacier in the world and climbed to the windiest place where it’s a miracle we didn’t get blown away in search of puffins! The best part of such trips is that we bond in different ways. Everybody talks and nobody listens,” she laughs.

Snapshots from Shabana Azmi’s holiday with her girl gang