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Among Fjords: A Bicycle Ride in Norway Manju Bansal Manju grew up in Chandigarh, India and presently lives with his wife Sheila in the San Francisco Bay Area. An adventure loving soul since his youth, Manju is a trained mountain-climber and has scaled heights over 20,000 ft high. For the past few years Manju has toured extensively on his cycle in various parts of the world, including the Rockies, the Alps and Alaska. Manju has been a columnist for the Times of India & the Economic Times, The Nation (Thailand) and Brandweek Publications (USA). He holds an MBA from UCLA and when he is not planning his next outdoor adventure he is the Founder of ThinkNotes, Inc., a knowledge-management software start-up. He can be reached at ThinkNotes@yahoo.com

It was yet another beautiful June day in fjord land. I was standing on the deck of MV Bergen Olaf watching the sun play hide and seek with the ever-present rain clouds as a light wind blew off the cool waters of Lysefjord. The Bergen Olaf was a state-run commuter ferry about 75 feet long and with room enough for a half dozen cars, some motorcycles and a few passengers. In this remote part of southwestern Norway, the ferry system was a lifeline for those people who chose to reside in small isolated communities deep inside the fjords and depended on such boats for food and supplies. The vessel was passing through a narrow channel, ringed on both sides by sheer vertical cliffs that grew right out of the water and rose for well over three thousand feet. In places the inlet was so tight that you could almost reach out and run your hands over the deep vertical grooves that had been gouged into the granite walls by millennia of steady erosion.

It was a formidable landscape indeed, immensely beautiful yet unforgiving at the same time and the heavy drone of the ship’s diesels actually provided a measure of calm and reassurance. Since it was not yet mid-summer, the tourist traffic hadn’t quite picked up and most of the passengers aboard were government workers headed out to the hydel station that had been constructed into the mountainside near Lysebotn, the hamlet that lay at the head of Lysefjord. As a result the deck was also mostly empty, the regulars preferring to relax in the smoking lounge below deck than brave the elements above.

I clambered up a short ladder to the bridge and found my eyes following the white water churning behind the boat. Westward, just where the wake petered out, I could make out the presence of the two picture postcard villages of Oanes and Forsand, placed diametrically across the two corners of the fjord entrance, like Viking gargoyles watching over the remote waterways. Squinting in the afternoon sun, I could also see the gleaming suspension span of the Oanes-Forsand bridge, recently constructed to connect these two towns that were a mere yelling distance away but until that bridge had remained miles apart.

Soon the boat rounded a corner and the westward view was lost to me. I then turned my back to the setting sun and found myself staring towards the fjord interior. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and changed the entire setting - gone was the patchy blue sky and the warm sunlit villages, replaced instead by deeply forested hills and a stony silence enshrouded in layer after layer of low clouds and mist. The waters of Lysefjord that were playful and inviting just moments earlier, now looked cold and foreboding. The dark gray rock walls got darker and the water began playing tricks with the eyes, appearing now to be a shade of polished turquoise, then an inky blue and then yet again momentarily reflecting the gray skies above. There was still enough daylight left and from my vantage point I observed schools of ivory colored jellyfish merrily accompanying the boat, their rotund heads and fluid bodies standing out in stark contrast with the color of the water. It was a moment of complete repose, almost as if my mind had shut out the sounds of the boat engines and the background chatter of the other passengers on the ferry. By now it had begun to drizzle lightly and with the wind whipping off the cold waters, I found myself alone on the cluttered ferry deck. I shrugged off the rain drops trickling down my neck and walked over to the front of the boat where a couple of dogs had been tied up by their owners at the designated “hundeparkering”, literally the parking place for hounds. They must have been hardy creatures for they smiled at me, wagged their tails to acknowledge my presence and then continued to stare into the distance unmindful of the rain or the apparent discomfort. In the distance I could now discern the outline of a small settlement, a couple of isolated lights twinkling in the twilight of the fjord. It was a few minutes later that the ferry started the docking procedures and I found myself wheeling my loaded bicycle on to the wharf at Lysebotn, my eyes still wide with the wonderment of the 3 ½ hour ride. I took in a deep breath and started pedaling the short distance to the campground that my Cappelen map indicated lay just ahead.

Sometimes the most exciting adventures begin with just plain dumb luck. A few months ago when I began thinking of a destination for another one of my bike trips, I stumbled upon a travelogue on the Internet written by a German rider a few years prior. It was a very detailed report about bicycling in southwestern Norway, with precise itineraries and route descriptions that one might expect only from a dedicated bike aficionado. Norway wasn’t even close to being on my list of potential destinations, but the more I read the report the more it seemed like a wonderful country to tour on a bike. And just as I was about to move on to the next item in the list of search results, I noticed that there was also a photo that had lain hidden at the bottom of the page. It was an aerial view of a curvy mountain road that began at sea level and in a series of tight hairpin bends clambered up a steep mountainside. In the photo, the waters of the fjord looked really blue and the forested hillsides were a deep, verdant green, like the kind one sees in Irish tourist brochures. The road itself seemed like a giant hand had taken a knife and carved it out of the rugged mountainside. It was a sight that instantly became etched on my mind and I knew immediately that I had found my next destination. Most journeys leave a distinct imprint on our mind that stays with us long after the trip is over. That lonely curvy road leading out from Lysebotn became the symbol of my search for the soul of Norway.

The campsite lay right on the edge of Lysefjord. It was a modest affair, with indoor plumbing but without any of the other attractions of a full-service operation. In essence it was really a lush, rain-drenched soccer field that was open for campers to pitch their tents and park their vehicles for short periods of time. As there was still some daylight left, I quickly pitched my tent and stowed away my gear, not knowing when it might start raining again. After all, this was southwest Norway where it rained over 80 inches per year, roughly comparable to the median rainfall in Hawaii. Although it was not raining, the temperature had dropped considerably (to around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, I guessed) so I wore a couple of warm layers and settled in to enjoy my dinner. It was probably the most breathtaking view that one could get from any dinner table - the lush green but uneven soccer field ringed by a neat rocky wall that was designed to keep sheep from neighboring farms from wandering into the camping area, followed by the endless expanse of the fjord hemmed in by vertical rock walls. In that magical twilight hour, under the canopy of splattered rain clouds, the whole view looked like the canvas of a master artist. As it was summertime, the sun didn’t fully set until well past midnight which provided ample time to watch the sky turn a deep orange and then a dark magenta and then just stay there getting progressively darker, although only very slowly. I sat there at the camp table for a long long time before I finally turned in for the night, the soft rhythm of several waterfalls echoing in my sleep.

It was a bright and sunny morning as I left Lysebotn and started pedaling towards Valle, my destination for the day and a good 80 miles away. I had spoken to a few people in the campground the night prior about my plans to ride up the road hoping to get a feel for what to expect. Mostly, however, I had elicited a response of incredulousness, “You are going to do what?” or “I assume you mean on a motorbike, right”? In the absence of any concrete information, I had packed some water and whatever little food I had left over from dinner. The campground host had indicated that there was an “eagle’s nest” type café that was open for the summer in Oygarstol, just at the top of the pass. So I had started early hoping to get in a few miles before the inevitable rain started. Almost immediately, the road began to climb and I found myself shifting gears to stay comfortable. I was carrying about 50lbs of weight in my panniers and with each switchback the bags felt like they weighed ten times as much. For the first few miles, the road passed through beautiful Norwegian birch and pine groves and the fjord was still visible, although from high up it had begun to look more like a lake than a part of the open sea that it really was. It was a warm and beautiful day to be out riding although a bit of a slow grind up as I confronted the almost 3,000 feet elevation gain and road gradients in excess of 10-11%.

A few miles further along I found myself facing an entrance to a tunnel, indicated to be well over a mile long. Since there were no “verboten” signs forbidding bicycles in the tunnel and as it was fairly early in the morning, I felt comfortable riding through it with the help of a handlebar-mounted halogen headlamp and a red pulsing light on the rear of the bike. I also knew that if a vehicle did come speeding through, the reflecting strips on my panniers and my jacket would alert them of my presence. Little did I know that vehicular traffic was the last thing I would have to worry about as I pedaled that mile and a half through the belly of the mountain. A few yards inside the tunnel entrance, it became pitch dark but I continued to ride slowly thinking that soon my eyes would adjust to the darkness and I would be able to see things more clearly. However, it quickly became pretty evident that this tunnel though situated right next to a massive power generating station did not benefit from its location. There was not a single working light inside the tunnel, in fact, I don't even know if they had any lights in there. And on top of that, the road continued to rise sharply in tight hairpin bends inside the tunnel. Back home in California, when I was buying the halogen headlamp in an outdoor store, the brochures had seemed to indicate that the lamp would emit a powerful beam of light that would light up a path 30 feet in front of the bike. Inside the serpentine gut of a dark Norwegian tunnel I realized how exaggerated those claims had been – far from a penetrating beam of any kind, the headlamp only cast a weak glow in the front that served only to exaggerate the thin layer of mist that had formed inside the tunnel. It was a surreal experience, riding in a pitch-black darkness while staring into a foggy white ether in the front. And as I climbed the switchbacks inside, the headlamp would shine on the sides of the tunnel revealing a rough unfinished surface, with small streams of water trickling down the moss-blackened walls. To this day I can still remember my heart beating a thousand beats a minute and the loud rasping of the bicycle chain echoing off the tunnel walls. The adrenaline was flowing but like in a bad dream, the harder I pedaled the slower the bike seemed to move. I strained to hear an approaching vehicle and silently prayed that the next turn would show the light at the end of the tunnel. It was probably the longest half hour that I have ever cycled in my life and I emerged from the tunnel drenched in sweat and shaking with mixed emotions of fear and exhilaration.

Whether it is due to the politics of man or good old plate tectonics, every place in the world has something unique about it. Norway, at least to me, has always been about Viking explorers and fjords. And it was those fjords that I had crossed an ocean to see. During my 2-week stay in Norway, I rode my bicycle for about 700 Miles, mostly along the western edges of the country where hundreds of those narrow ribbons fan the coastline like the skin of a massive wrinkled prune. I started in the small town of Stavanger, the capital of the Norwegian oil industry and slowly wound my way up to beautiful Bergen and then on to the spectacularly picturesque town of Alesund. I spent days riding along the flanks of several fjords, some completely nameless others geographic celebrities, but each one having a unique character and personality. They were always intriguing to look at but on moist rainy days they went from being just wet to simply divine. And as I was only going about 10 miles an hour on my bike, I would have a ringside view of this unexpected and almost chameleon-like transition. As the wind picked up and the rain came down in a deluge or as the sun emerged briefly to illuminate the landscape, so did the personality of the fjords change. And that was where being on a bicycle became a textured and multi-dimensional experience. I would actually feel the wind picking up, the water changing color and the deep existential sounds of the sea becoming louder until finally I would hear that changing mood reflected in the rising fury of the waves crashing on the rocky beaches along which I rode. It took a little getting used to such weather for I would constantly be playing this game with nature, zipping up my rain jacket or hunching down to avoid the sudden wind. After a while, I began observing the surface of the fjord and looking for little telltale eddies that might indicate when the game would start. And as if the visual treat wasn’t enough, there was also a wide range of earthy odors that enveloped the area like a constant background chant. I would smell rhododendrons, mushrooms, pine and the occasional cannabis, all interwoven with the pungent aroma of a plant that seemed to be a blend between onion and garlic. Most of the time, the road would hug the coastline separated only 10-50 yards from the fjords and even though the road would follow the level of the sea, for some reason it would never be flat. Whether this was done by design or the dictates of geography, I don't know but it was pretty clear that those roads had not been designed to keep the comfort of wayward cyclists in mind.

Temperamentally speaking, Norway was a very easy country to ride alone in – most people spoke fluent English, things were organized with Germanic efficiency and because of the relative prosperity petty theft and harassment of strangers was completely missing. The open camping laws of the country meant that one could pitch one’s tent anywhere one wanted, as long as one wasn’t trespassing on someone else’s property. And given the north latitude location, summertime meant over 22 hours of daylight to enjoy and soak in, if it wasn’t raining or overcast that it. And did I mention all those gorgeous fjords? While they sure were pretty to look at, their more practical impact could be rather devastating for an unobservant cyclist or motorist – you miss a turn (or in my case, fail to understand what the sign in Norwegian says) and you could ride along for 50 miles on a perfectly paved road only to find it suddenly come to a dead screeching halt at the end of yet another nameless fjord. The only way out is to ride back the way you came in or hope there is a ferry that stops at this remote village. While such cul-de-sacs didn’t trap me too many times, it did happen enough to force me to explore parts of the region where I otherwise would not have taken the trouble to visit. In a way, there was something strangely sublime about stumbling onto a tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere and having a cup of coffee in an equally charming café where you could smell the aroma of fresh raisin bread baking in the oven. As John Barth wrote in “The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, “You don't reach Serendip by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ... serendipitously."

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