Pubblichiamo un diario di viaggio redatto in inglese da Sebastian Prati di Bré s/Lugano, che attualmente studia e lavora a Tromso, Norvegia. Particolarmente significative sono le sue foto che accompagnano il testo.
Ulteriori informazioni sul suo sito http://www.prase.info/ – http://www.prase.info/blog/
Introduzione
Yes, I’ll fly to Oslo, and if I get to meet her I’ll give her the shrimps, then I’ll continue my journey to the north. So the 15th July I’ll take the train from Oslo to Bodø. Then I’ll continue the trip by foot up to Tromsø along the Nordkalottruta (Arctic Trail) and some others trail armed with backpack, tent and fishing rod. Along the hike I’ll take pictures and maybe some video but I won’t have the laptop with me in order to safe weight and space, so picture will follow at the end of the trail. I should arrive the 6th of August in Tromsø and the following week start a master degree in freshwater ecology at the Arctic University of Tromsø. I won’t give up totally with aquariums in fact the first thing I’ll do once in Tromsø is buy a small aquarium .
MY NORWEGIAN EXPERIENCE
Hi everybody, as usual, I appear and disappear like a ghost, writing inconstantly, but here I’m again. In the last post, I wrote a while ago, I was telling what my plan was, well plan as usual changed a little bit he he. So I give you some update, I arrived in Oslo the 15th of July and I meet Nora Marie Andresen at the Station, was nice to see her again, and we spent few hours drinking beer and speaking. I spent then another day in Oslo just going around the city before getting to a train and make almost 22 hours trip up to Bodø where I wanted to start my hike. I arrived in Bodø around 9.00 under constant rain, I walked around the city and after few hour the rain stopped. As I saw there was still snow high in the mountains I started to ask information around and after a while, I managed to get some information about the hiking conditions from a couple of backpackers. They told me that due to the heavy rains of the last days the rivers were too high and they weren’t able to cross them, so I decided to take a bus to Narvik the same day and the day. The landscape was really nice and at one point we had to take the ferry to cross a fjord, 20 minutes ferry with Lofoten on the background. I Arrived in Narvik late in the Night and the day after I took another bus to Abisko in Sweden where I was finally able to start my journey along the Nordkalottenruta.
Along the way, reindeers were a constant presence in the mountains, often appearing and disappearing like a ghost in the fog. I had to go around some mountains due to high water in the rivers, but even if I was modifying the path on a daily basis discovering interesting hidden valleys, some with a special microclimate that made them look like a jungle. When the fog disappeared the landscape showed up in all his beauty revealing waterfall, canyons, and bright warm colors. And remains of the ghosts were shining under the sun. Small and big lakes where omnipresent and in the mountains snow was still there due to the very late arrival of the summer, which was good for mosquito as there were very few but bad for wading rivers as the rise in temperature suddenly made the snow melting fast, rising the water level.
I was able to enjoy amazing landscapes and get to know interesting people that I encountered during the hike. I was not used to 24 h of light and I was quite hyperactive so basically, I often hiked from 4-5 to 22-23, with only very short breaks to eat or drink when I remembered, I was very focused on hiking and my eyes and mind were lost in the surrounding nature. I only noticed that I was getting addicted to that when I realized that I only used my fishing road for around an hour to catch some Arctic charr for meals during the whole trip. So at the end I did around 420 km by foot in 10 days including one day stop in a husky farm located in Innset where I spent the day helping two Swiss-German guys painting a new building. By the way, if you are around that area I suggest you to spend one night there, is quite cheap, the owners are really nice and the food is awesome.
Well I arrived the 24th of July (13 days in advance) in Tromsø and I settled down in my flat on the beautiful island of Kvaløya and as soon as I stopped to hike my body started to claim that I needed to compensate the loss of weight and rest a bit, so I spent the following 3 days eating basically all day long. I know some of you want to see more and better quality pictures, I made almost all of them quickly with the phone, well I had the camera with me but I only used it very few because I was too lazy to take it out from the backpack, take out part of the stuff, open the dry bag, open the camera bag, take out the camera, take a picture and put everything back before was soaking wet, and very often I was too absorbed observing the surrounding nature to realize I had a proper camera.
Sebastian Prati, 25 dicembre 2017
