Thursday 27 August 2015

Land of ice and fire


This has been one of those ridiculously awesome trips! :-) Each day has been spectacular and often for different reasons. But not a moment has been dull. We've been hiking around the southern bit of Iceland close to glaciers, volcanoes, mountains, rivers and glacial plains for four days now and it's been achingly beautiful for the most part. The rest has been dominated by biblically awful weather. :-) Yup, it's been a trip like no other.

And there's still two more days. Hopefully one for hiking and half of another to fit in a short walk before we head back to Reykjavik and then onward back to Asker. The weather looks promising!

Snowfields in blizzards, strings of spectacular waterfalls, range upon range of craggy mountains, the many shades of volcanic ash fueled green between molten metal coloured rocks. And vast fields of black sand and gravel. Rivers meandering along giant flat valleys surrounded by sheer mountain walls. This is a landscape like no other! And I live in Norway!  :-)

I'm glad that we decided to make it an exclusively hiking trip. Maybe we come back another time to explore more of this country in a car, but for a start I couldn't have asked for anything better!

Of course, my legs feel otherwise, but they will recover. The memory of these landscapes are more than worth the effort. :-)

Feeling: tired happy :-)
Listening to: Icelandic radio :-D

Sunday 23 August 2015

Life as seen through time

It has been rather remiss of me I suppose, never finishing the story :-). I've been back for two weeks now, and in some ways the distance makes for a better bit of introspection. Although back, as we shall see, isn't quite accurate just at this moment. But more on that later.

Just about when I'd written the last post, the trip took a turn for the expected degree of hectic. Travelling ensued, as well as driving around within Kolkata. I continued to claw back to the formerly expected levels of comfort behind the wheel while still noticing that this was the new unusual.

Visiting family after long periods of time has its ups and downs. But being ok with unexpected changes goes a long way. After all, I too have changed. The world itself and everything on it, changes slowly each instant. When you see it all the time, there's nothig to see. But when the Iinstants roll on into years it becomes rather more obvious. Seems simple when put like that, but it's still a hell of a thing to get my head around.

Change isn't bad though, for instance, there has been a new and extremely energetic canine addition to the family at Asansol :-). She's only four and a half months old, and will be very interesting to see whenever it is I make it back there next.

And then there were the mangoes :-). Generally speaking, I don't very much like the mangoes you get in Asker. When you get them at all. So imagine my joy when from the very first day in Kolkata, there were sweet delicious mangoes, almost every day! I may have eaten more mangoes in two weeks than I had eaten in whole seasons before :-). I guess it's true, you never realize quite how much you moss something till you no longer have it.

And then I noticed the mango sapling growing in the drive of my grandpa's place! The thought of carrying it away to my garden in Gullhella did cross my mind, but not for long. Some things are just not meant for some places. Just goes to show. 

It was nice though, catching a bit of sunshine in the end, after days of almost flood-causing downpours. And finding out that while changes will continue, they often help figure out the bits that are really important. Two weeks was never going to be enough, but then what is enough? And I now have too much to look forward to at home.

Since then there's been a couple of weeks of mostly busy andbeautifully sunny days. I've spent most of them lazing about on some friendly patch of grass or other,  or walking about in the woods. And once on a golf course :-). But all that laziness is about to get made up for. We landed in Keflavik this morning, and managed to make our way to Hveragerđi via Reykjavik. Tomorrow we begin five days of hiking around the glaciers and volcanoes of southern Iceland! Yup, within spitting distance of the infamous Eyafjallajokull! Some interrsting days lie ahead no doubt :-). 

Currently: trying to relax my rather terrified legs :-)
Listening to: a rushing stream amidst steaming geysers