A rather unexpected journey

Sometimes it is especially difficult to write about something you care much. Maybe because you think that putting it into words will somewhat diminish its worth. It takes a lot of writing skills to convey to those who weren’t there the splendour of something that you yourself experienced.  But it is also difficult because writing it down will put a close to it. Once written and read, it has happened and is therefore finished. No matter what, it will never happen again, at least not in the exact same way. And I guess, as with all things we enjoy, we are afraid that we will never experience something as good as that again.

Nevertheless, I will try to make you understand a little bit of the magic that happened to us travelling through the Norwegian forests, mountains, lakesides, snowfields and rocky plains. The genious J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: Not all those who wander are lost.

Well, we were a bit lost. Sitting on the shore of the upper end of a thin arm of the Hardanger Fjord, in the middle of the Norwegian pampa, so to speak. Around us just a few wooden houses and a bunch of sheep. Not even a hint of a boat that could take us to the nearest civilized town. With the closest cabin 5 hours away and it already being 4 o’clock in the afternoon, things didn’t look too well. In fact, we were pretty desperate, thinking our adventure had come to a sudden end. After some cookie-eating and parents-calling (it helps a lot to hear a familiar voice in those moments), we decided to knock on doors. No luck with the first 5 houses, who seemed only to serve the traveller’s imagination of a cute little Norwegian Village with wooden buildings, without any people actually living there. We came to a white, two-storey house, the front door of which was open. After some hesitating (“mier chönd doch nöd eifach in s huus vo öpperem inelaufe!”) we went in, hearing the sounds of a TV. I knocked on the door. There was the sound of someone getting up from a chair and afterwards of two feet walking across the wooden floor. The door was opened.

Everything started about 35 hours earlier with the ringing of the alarm clock. The time was 5.28, the day Monday, it was still dark outside. The radio played some Norwegian Programme to which we payed no close attention. After a short “do I have to get up – aah, it’s so early – gosh, it’s dark – the bed is so comfy” – kind of activity in the brain we managed to get up, eat breakfast and pack our backpacks. If everything turned out the way we planned, we would be back on Thursday evening. It didn’t, of course. Luckily.

2 hours later we were in our train to Voss, anxiously watching the weather that passed by outside the windows. Clouds. No rain. But no sun either.

In Voss itself we visited the Tourist Information, to make sure that our plans made any sense: Are the cabins open? Is the road do-able? Is the weather going to be o.k.?

“Just morning fog” the lady in the centre assured us. “Probably gone by noon”. She went through our routes with us on her computer, showing no particular objection to our trip, except that it “would take us a bit of walking”. “As long as we reach the hut at sundown, we’re fine with that”, I joked. And yes, the huts are open. And quite big for that matter. The first one having 24 beds. It can get cramped when school classes are there, but they had no reservation, so no school class tonight. Good for us. The other two huts, also on very beautiful locations. We would never reach them, though.

Every good trip stands and falls with the food. We knew that and were accordingly provided with Water, Muesli-Riegel, Cookies, more Cookies, Chocolate, Cheese, Ham and Polar Brød. The latter was our Lembas (Lord of the Rings reference, yay); shaped like a pancake, containing about as much sugar as a pancake, extremely substantial. One small bite can save you from exhaustion after 8 hours of walking. That turned out to be vital.

Thus equipped, we started walking. Our goal: Torfinnsheim Hytta.

Whoever this Torfinn was (we imagined him as being a big fat troll, capable of witchcraft), he didn’t hesitate to cast some stones in our path (literally). And some snowfields. And a seemingly never-ending ascend. Sometimes he would hide the “T”’s that marked our road so cunningly that we spend quite some time finding them again (whoever said “take the road less travelled” has obviously never done hiking in Norway), getting nervous at the prospect of being lost on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere and being forced to ring the Norwegian Mountain Rescue (it’s free, but hey, who wants to admit defeat?)

But somehow we always found our way again. And said way was quite beautiful. Once we had gotten over the fog, we experienced what we afterwards learned was the most beautiful day in weeks, at least weather-wise.

But see for yourself.

9 hours, 4 polarbröds, 1 müesliriegel, 1.5 liter of water, 10 snow fields, 1500 meters in altitude, a bar of Toblerone and several “are we there yet”s later, we reached our destination. The sigh of relief was somehow stopped by what we saw lying in front of the door of the hut: About 40 shoes, in quite an orderly mess, and voices coming from inside the hut. Loud voices. Oh dear. Please not.

If the lady at the tourist information in Voss had not mentioned school classes, we would never even have had the idea that there could be such a thing waiting for us in a cabin. And her assuring us that there was NO school class present was only a negation of something we would have never thought about. Don’t think of the blue elephant. But she was wrong. There WAS a blue elephant. And it was a noisy, hyperactive one.

After 9 hours of walking you somehow lose your sense of politeness. So our reaction to meeting the authorities (i.e. the teachers) and their telling us that there was one bed and one sofa left, might not have been the nicest. But they knew how to appease two hungry hikers: Tacos. So we filled our stomachs while a bunch of curious 12 year olds went in and out of the kitchen to catch a glimpse at us and practised their language skills with the two girls from Switzerland, who could speak German, English and French. One of the rather young teachers sat with us and suddenly broke out in laughter, saying: “I can’t imagine how you must feel after 9 hours of walking and coming to the hut and finding – well – this!” Oh yeah.

After the generous dinner we sat us down on the sofa in the living room, drinking tea, the flock of teenagers quickly gathered around us. Singing was on the list.

We didn’t have another choice than to participate – and soon found ourselves gladly bawling along with “My heart will go on” and “4-5 Seconds”, to the pleasure of our younger fellows. Than it was bedtime and the teacher informed the group that they should not walk around at night, since we were given two mattresses in the living room, which needed to be crossed if one of the young ones went to the toilet. An especially cheeky individuum brawled out that it didn’t matter what they talked about since we could not understand them anyway. I silenced him with: “Jeg skjønner faktisk veldig godt det som du sier.” Authority established.

The night was a short one. And of course no one really sticked to the rules and there was a constant coming and going around us – and we woke up at 8 o’clock by overenthusiastic youths who obviously did not yet enter the phase where every minute of sleep is cherished like a rainless day in Bergen. Just wait, it will come for you, too!

We admittedly hoped that we would be invited for breakfast. But while everyone was busying around with Nutella Bread, Hot Chocolate and Knäckebröd, we had to eat our Polarbröd and a Müesliriegel, knowing that what we would have to survive for three days more on that. At 10.30 we started out. The weather was holding and there was no steep ascend to do today. Everything went according to plan. Til we came to the junction. And there, the fate of our whole trip was decided, everything could have turned out differently.

You see, there are the T-marked roads. And than there are the ones who aren’t. We decided to stay on a t-marked road to the south, although the sign for our destination pointed westwards. We believed that it would not make much of a difference, not confident enough to just walk by map and compass (we did not even have a compass, for that matter).

So we continued our journey til we reached a cabin on the top of a mountain, overlooking a long valley that ended at the arm of a fjord. On the map, we saw that there was a place called Botnen located by the water. Maybe there was a hostel or something. Or maybe there was a ferry that could take us to… well, somewhere we could stay. Because the weather was likely to turn bad the day after and we would not want to hike in the rain.

The descend was horrendous. Our legs were tired, the road was narrow and steep, overgrown by plants, some of which were quite painful to touch. Some stones were slippery and loose. More than once we landed on our hands or on our backpacks. More than once, a “Holey Moley” needed to be shouted out loud in order to relieve some tension. Our guardian angel would have had all hands full with preventing us from falling harder. Somehow, and we still wonder how, we reached the bottom. The rest was a Sunday walk, compared to the way down. When we reached the end of the valley and came to the water, we had passed some houses and seen some sheep, but had not met any living person. No sign of a boat. Or of a hostel. Oh dear.

Walking further was out of question. That would be another 10 kilometres or so.

Thus at wit’s end, we knocked. Maybe it was fate all along, from the moment we started off from Bergen on Monday; that we would end up here, where we had never even thought of going. Knocking on that one door would define the way we would later remember our adventure. Definitely not as an ordinary hiking trip.

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When Lars Botnen got up in the morning, he had no idea that what started out as an ordinary day would soon turn into an exceptional one. His dog Emma was already anxiously waiting for food when he drew back the curtains and looked out his window. It was going to be another beautiful day. A few clouds hung around the mountain tops on both side of the fjord, but apart from that, the sky was blue. The sun had not yet made its way over the rocks but it was light never the less. He had grown up in Botnen, the small place in the Hardangerfjord in Western Norway and still returned during the summer months. He had seen many a morning, and lived through many a day, but none was the same as the one before. He appreciated that. He loved it, when something unexpected happened. In the meadow in front of the house a solitary sheep was passing by, ringing its bell with every step. Lars didn’t like the sheep. They made too much noise for his liking. He ruffled Emma’s head while he was standing at the window for a moment. In his head he went through the list: pack his backpack. Wash the linen. Clean out the fridge. Collect the garbage. Turn off the water. All things he needed to do before he left Botnen tomorrow. It would be a bit of work to do. Emma licked his hand. Oh yes, feed the dog.

Later that day he sat down in his living room and turned on the TV. It was an old, almost antique piece, showing only black and white, but it was enough. He did not spend much time in front of the TV anyway. But the news he watched quite frequently. He ate the last piece of bread, which left him with a Yogourt for his breakfast. He did not need anything for dinner, since tonight, he would dine with Mikael and Ragnar. He wondered about what the dinner would be: venison would be nice – Mikael knew how to prepare venison. Emma, who had taken her usual place on the sofa lifted her head and perked up her ears. “Hva er det, jenta mi?” said he. He looked out of the window. Two figures were walking down the road to the water. They had rather large backpacks. He watched the clock; it was 4 p.m. Backpackers at this time of the day? He wondered where they were heading. He focused on the TV once more. Emma, too, after some minutes lay her black head down on the sofa again.  Lars dosed off. He was woken up by a knock on the door. The only person that came to his head who was likely to come over was Mikael, informing him about changes in the dinner-plans. Emma had left her place and stood in front of the wooden door, wagging her tail. Lars stood up from his chair and went to the door. When he opened the door, the surprise could not have been bigger. It was not Mikael. Outside his door stood two young women, probably in their twenties. They carried backpacks and each had a little bag with a camera around the shoulder. Emma jumped forward, greeting the visitors. Lars smiled. Something unexpected.

I must have mumbled something quite unintelligible in Norwegian about us and our trip and how we ended up here. I had thought about what I would say, so the words probably came out a little too fast. Anyhow, the man with a friendly face invited us in, made us sit on the sofa and asked calmly: “How can I help you?” So we started explaining.  

The rest is history. Not only did Lars offer us as place to stay for the night; he offered us a ride to Bergen. Since he would head that way the day after anyway, he would take us with him. But the most important thing was, that he invited us to feel at home. We accompanied him to the little party with Mikael and Ragnar (whose comment upon  seeing us sitting at the table was “er de flyktinger? – are they refugees?”) and got to hear the most exciting stories about the “tough life in Botnen”: we learned about most intelligent dogs, heard stories about love and loss, tales about adventure and peril and people surviving in the most extreme circumstances.

The food was delicious: We got to eat freshly baked bread, potato salad, rice and venison, shot only a few kilometres away, up in the mountain.  And we tried a true Norwegian specialty called “Dravle” as well as another Norwegian specialty named Aquavit (as well as beer and cognac. Norwegian hospitality at its best.). 

The other morning, Mikael took us with his boat to Porsmyr and from there we started our drive to Bergen.

Thus, our adventure was over a bit sooner than we had expected and planned. But I think both of us would chose to go the road to Botnen again (maybe not down that horrible mountain-path, though).

Those are the kinds of adventures you cannot plan. And those are the best kind of adventures.