EuroTrip - Day 12

To the Nature and Engineering

Norway tourism runs a short trip called 'Norway in a nutshell'. This is trip through some of the most beautiful places in Norway and ending in one of the biggest fjords here. Oslo to Bergen - this route is done in three modes of transportation - train, bus and cruise. And each ride is more beautiful than the others.

We decided to follow the same route that is taken by this trip. The first leg of this journey is from Oslo to Myrdal (around 2 hours long) on the world famous Oslo-Bergen rail route. This 100 years old train is celebrating its century this year. Voted the best train journey in the world a couple of years back, this train indeed an experience in itself. It goes through the best of the countryside. On one side, you see the beautiful hills and on other the river and fjords greeting you all along. The mountains are snow clad and clearly the rivers are the melted glaciers that are seen on the top of this mountains.

To our good luck, the gentleman seating next to us happen to be the president of some big railway authority in Norway. He told us about the past and present of this train. He also gave us a calendar with beautiful pictures of the train route taken during different points of time in the year. This route is fully covered with snow during winter time and is closed in the peak winter time. At this point of time in September, we get to enjoy the golden colors of autumn and see some traces of snow at a little distance up the hills.

There are also innumerable tunnels that are the trademark of this route. To think that this route was built a hundred years back, one can not but respect man's engineering prowess.

Myrdal (alt 866 m above sea level) is the starting point of the another world famous rail journey. The Flam Railways takes you through the wild Flam valley. The 20 km long journey takes you to Flam (alt 2 m above sea level) in around an hour. This marvel of engineering sees the route covering a descent of 2838 ft and a gradient of one in 18. There are enormous tunnels (20 of them) that spiral in and out of the mountainside to overcome the challenge of steep slope. There are beautiful snow clad mountain peaks, tall and beautiful waterfalls all along the route. Kjosfossen is a 130m tall waterfall where the train stops to capture some kodak moments. It is like the Bhedaghat in Jabalpur. Just that the water falls from a greater height, water is ice-cold and that the tourist can see it from close to the bottom of the fall. Clearly the best moment of the day so far.

The journey to Flam continues with more tunnels and waterfalls on the way. There are some villages too, each with its own story. The train announcement system gives brief about each such spot on the route.

The third leg consists of a cruise journey from Flam to Gudvangen. This two hour long ride takes you through some of the biggest and deepest Fjords in Norway. You get to see some more beautiful waterfalls and villages on the route.

Till now we had seen the architectural marvels of train engineering. The next leg from Gudvangen to Voss covers the good work of the road engineering work. The one hour long journey takes you through some (I think there were 13) of the sharpest turns you can imagine. And these turns (like the u-pin bends you must have seen on the way to some hill station) also counter one of the highest slope on such turns. Around 18% of gradient is countered on the mountain with bends that look like coiled snake. For the first time in my life, I had to wear seat belts in a bus ride. And to add to the fun, there are beautiful waterfalls and view of the valley down. The lady (yes, in these parts of the world there seem to be no gender discrimination at all) who was driving the bus told ua about the history and current ventures in this road route.

Voss seemed to be a place from our dreams. A sleepy town with tall and green hills overseeing the large sea below them. Interestingly this town too has marked itself well on the tourism map. With lots of adventure sports on water and in air, it also has some offering on the cultural side. We reached on a day when it seemed to host party in some large white tent complex. It was too tempting for us to spend the night here so we started searching for some hostel or camp site. The camp site was right next to the sea (or was it just like the backwaters? It's very difficult to say with confidence) and hosted lots of caravans, tents and cabins. As we did not have our own tents, we were told that we could hire cabin for night. But the 500 nok rent seemed little over our budget so we decided to continue our journey to Bergen.

The last leg of "Norway in a nutshell" tour goes from Voss to Bergen on the Oslo Bergen train route. Again some more tunnels, waterfalls and snow clad mountains. I think we had seen too much of them and now we wanted either to go touch them or else get some cozy place to the rest.

In Bergen, we tried to look for hostel and with the help of the tourist information center we could easily locate the YMCA hostel. Located in the center of the town, this looked like a very good place. But alas they did not have any bed in their dormitory so we had to look for some alternative. A short walk around the central part and smelter queries here and there and we realized that there was no other cheap option.

And there came the EuRail pass to our rescue. As there was a train back to Oslo in night, we decided to spend the night in train and then plan our rest of the trip in morning. We were too tired to do anything now. So a quick dinner of cup noodles (can you believe that we had to buy hot water for that) and some bread and we were ready for the train at 11. As usual a quick nap could be accommodated before that.

That was day 12 on my EuroTrip.