Norway in Nutshell continues!!!!

As I sit here in front of my system trying to work hard, it seems to be more harder to work. So to make things easy I stopped working for today!!! Hope my manager doesnt read this one!!

Ok finally me and my roomie decided to explore Norway and its beautiful fjords. I had researched a lot on what to see in Norway and there were so many places I wanted to visit. We booked the tickets for the famous "Norway in Nutshell" tour. This would take us from Oslo-Myrdal-Flam-Gudvangen-Stalheim-Voss-Bergen-Oslo.
As we started the journey from the Oslo Terminal, it was really exciting and cold. The train from Oslo-Bergen was voted the best among the top 20 railway lines during 1999.The morning shivers and the excitement made it more interesting. I had my camera all ready for any nice capture from the train. :)
The train passed over a few places on the outskirts of Oslo and after a while I could see snow for the first time in my life. It felt so fresh and bright!!! Although i captured a few snaps of the snow, the best moment was when we reached Finse which has a station 1222 meters above sea level. Everything except the tracks were covered in snow. There was a heavy breeze blowing and everyone in the train was excited by the beautiful sight. We got a couple of minutes to get down of the train and have the touch of snow!!!

Ah.. here you go with a nice picture of Finse station.
This was one of the best travel experiences for me. After a few minutes, the train driver announced that there is a glacier on our right side and boy was it not beautiful. You should see it for yourself below!



Isnt it beautiful? And dont fail to see those small houses at the bottom of that picture. How I wish to stay there for a week drinking beer along with coffee. Travelling around to see the beautiful snow capped mountains.
As we were approaching the Myrdal station we had a glimpse of a beautiful snow capped mountain. It seemed as though that mountain is a part of heaven. A place where there is nothing regarding your daily jobs, no news of killings, no news of political instability!



Finally we reached Myrdal where we had to change the train to travel to one of the most exciting train journeys in the world and the most beautiful one! Since the train from Bergen got delayed by 1 hour, we had some time to explore the beautiful sights surrouning Myrdal.
Myrdal seemed to be inbetween mountains and we were left alone in between from the outside world. It seemed that we were in a valley of several mountains around us.




There are so many pictures which I can show you all, but probably you have to visit my photo album.
But i cannot resist myself from including one more picture for this post as it would seem injustice to one of the best trains' Flambana. This train starts from 800 mts above sea level and reached 2 meters above sea level in 20 kms. It takes around 1 hour to reach Flam from Myrdal.

This train is a cable pulled train and is the first of its kind in the world. The train stops at the best locations so that people can enjoy the beautiful mountains and waterfalls. One of them is the Kjosfossen waterfall.

We finally reached Flam from where we had to board a ferry. Reaching Flam seemed like reaching a new world alltogether, it was in the center of many mountains and so peaceful and beautiful. See for yourself the beauty of Flam and my photography. :)))



From Flam through the Fjords... will continue!!!
Happy Reading!

Norway in Nutshell

I have been planning from a long time to write about my first trip out of India. My very good friend Susheel has been trying get my thoughts about the trip to Oslo. As usual due to my habit of procrastination it has taken me more than 3 months to finally get started. Anyways I am happy that it is better late than never.

Date: 9th October, 2007
Place: Bangalore
Do I need to tell about this place? I do not feel like, but just to let you know that the IT city of India has one of the most unorganized airports. I still cannot understand what made the government take so long to get an International Airport in Bangalore( lets hope the BIAL airport kicks off on time ).

After wishing my family and friends good bye, I was sitting in the waiting area for my flight. Finally after 2 long hours of wait I got my first chance to travel in an International flight destination Paris. I was overwhelmed by the word Paris. I always wanted to travel to Europe and Paris was my stop over to Oslo. The flight journey was really tiring, but I was more excited about reaching Norway and hence did not feel the journey tiring. After around 9 hours of flight journey I reached Paris and I felt great to see the CDG. It is an awesome and wonderfully managed Airport. I reached the Terminal 2D. From this terminal I had to travel to the terminal 2E for my next flight to Oslo. And to my excitement I had to travel by a train to terminal 2E.
The CDG airport was in itself a small town and everything was perfectly organized.

My next flight to Oslo was about in 2 hours. So in the mean time I was trying out if I could access some internet on my laptop. I was really disappointed that at CDG there was no facility to surf the internet free of cost. There were a few networks available but none was free. I believe CDG should have had at least one network setup where people could surf the net for free as it made no sense in buying a 24 hour internet connection from the networks at the airport when you are there for not more than a couple of hours.

After a wait which seemed to be a bit long I was finally in the KLM flight to Oslo. The journey to Oslo was tiring. I was trying to keep myself awake so that I can get the feel of the journey, but could not help closing my eyes for a few times. Finally when I could hear the captain saying that the plane will be landing in 20 minutes at the Oslo Airport, Gardermoen I was thrilled. I was finally going to land in Oslo after a long journey of 15 hours.
Well when I landed at the Oslo Airport, I was surprised by the size of the Airport. I was expecting it to be a very big one, but felt that I was landing on a airport similar to the one in Bangalore. Similarity ends here as the airport is very well maintained. One cannot forget that Norway lists in the top 3 cleanest countries in the world.

After collecting my baggage, I had to travel to the Oslo City. I was told that we have airport trains which run every 20 minutes from the Airport to Oslo S. Everything seemed so easy, right from collecting the train tickets to carrying your baggage till the train. The train is just at the basement of the Airport which makes it much more comfortable. Looking at the train I felt that it was nothing less than an airplane on tracks. The train was to travel till Skoyen from Oslo Airport. From the airport till the Oslo S there was one stop at Lillestrom. Sitting in the train I was watching the beautiful country side of Norway. It was a pleasant time of the day with mild sunshine. I was very impressed by the travel time of just 19 minutes from the Airport to the center of the city. This was a fast train traveling at around 80 - 100 kms per hour.
Finally after getting out of the train and walking for some 100 meters I could find the taxi stand and was very excited to travel in a Mercedes.

In all it was a exciting journey to reach Oslo with some hiccups in the middle to reach my place in Oslo City mainly again due to some disorganized things which I cannot mention here.
For the next edition of Norway in Nutshell keep visiting this blog.
Till then
Takk!