Scandinavia- 28th Oct (Sat)

Breakfast was served in one of the rooms, room 213. A breakfast selection was all laid out, there was also ham, cheese, milk, yogurt and others in the fridge.

We loaded our backpacks back into the car and managed to hit the roads at around 8:30am. It was the earliest we managed so far. We were going to catch the touristy Flam Railway train today. The famous Flam Railway is over 65 years old and is one of the world’s most extraordinary stretches of railway, the steepest of its kind in the world. From Flam to the top, it comprises a climb of nearly 900 meters, a spiraling tunnel inside the mountain as well as a breath-taking view. Flam lies in the innermost arm of the world’s longest and deepest fjord, the 204 km long and 1308 metre deep Sognefjord. It is surrounded by precipitous mountainsides, thundering waterfalls and narrow valleys.

From Aurland, the railway station was 8km away. We bought a pair of round trip tickets and managed to catch the first train at Flam (9am). The scenery was magnificent, enhanced by the beautiful sunny weather we had. We had a 5 mins stop at the Kjosfossen waterfall. At the top, the station is called Myrdal. Myrdal had modern trains coming in from Bergen/Oslo. From Flam, there were very few passengers, maybe a total around 7 passengers. At Myrdal, quite a lot of passengers got off from the Bergen/Oslo train and boarded our Flam railway. Around 30 new passengers boarded our train on its return journey.

After we got off the railway, we hit the road and went on E16, past Aurland, and then at Laerdal, we went on R5 back to Fodnes ferry terminal where we took the ferry back to Mannheller. From Mannheller, we went on R5, back to Sogndal, had lunch at a cafeteria at Gaupne (cheese burgers) and then headed northwards by R55 to Luster, and then all the way to Lom. We drove a total of 241km today.

At Luster, we tried to look for the ancient stave church that was built in 1130, included in UNESCO’s World Heritage list but realized that it could only be reached by ferry. But that was not before we mistook another church for this church.

From Luster to Skjolden (end of the fjord), we started climbing the mountains. From Fortun, around 60km from Lom, there were traces of snow and the roads turned icy. In that last stretch of drive to Lom, we crossed Fantestein (a summit of 1434m). We had read that when the pass opens in spring, the sides of the channel formed by the snow ploughs can be more than ten metres high in some of the most weather exposed areas. We had been worried about doing this pass but assumed that it would be alright since it is such a touristy attraction.

The snow poles were really tall here, 5 or more metres high. The lowest temperature recorded on that stretch by our car was -10 degrees Celsius. Though the roads were dangerously icy, we were surrounded by beautiful waterfalls, snow white backgrounds, semi frozen lakes and streams. We were on the icy roads for slightly more than an hour and I drove an average of 40km/h on that whole stretch. It was very tedious but at least we didn’t meet with any incidents. We were lucky too that the weather was so good today, it wasn’t snowing and visibility was 100%. Though the roads were icy, it was a very thin layer of ice on the surface and not much snow on the roads at all.

We stayed in Lom, Fossheim Hotel for the night. The hotel seemed very nice and new though the area’s much colder than the places we have visited so far. We drove around the area and spotted an old stave church nearby (Ross recalls that Tor mentioned about this church before). The building was quite peculiar and the roof reminded me of Chinese dragon symbols.

We walked across the road for dinner and were freezing by the time we reached there. Ross had a pizza as usual while I had the taco buffet. The food was good. There was a pair of Caucasian couple who ordered right before us. I was puzzled why the lady kept staring at me all the while that we were ordering and even as I helped myself to the food. Ross noticed too and felt it peculiar too. He thought that it might be because Chinese are not that common around here, while I was worried that it might be because of any racism. In any case, they only had coffee and left soon after finishing their drinks.

Back in our room, it was quite chilly. We couldn’t seem to adjust the temperature to our liking. We also had problems finding an English channel to watch. The TV reception didn’t seem to be very good and we only managed to find 2 local channels, no cable. We watched a Norwegian game show, “Deal No Deal” and tried to figure out what was being said. After that, we watched an episode of “House” on our computer before “Nottinghill” came on at 10:20pm.