Europe India trip - Day 8-9: Evje to Trolltunga Camping [ Apr 20-21, 2023]
The day of first camping in Norway .. although not at the place where I thought I would :) .. also the coldest ride so far of the trip
This is part of my Europe India solo motorbike trip . Please read the post for more context.
I had a sour back from trying to pick my fallen motorbike in Torring (Denmark) the previous day & I wanted to rest. Also, the Otra Hostel that I got, was pretty good both in facilities & price. So I had decided to stay in Evje.
I remember going for a coffee at a cafe nearby. It was a sunny day. The cafe was on first floor & sitting there reminded me of cafe in Leh & Manali in India.
I wrote my pending blog post & then headed to meet Ingeborg. She needed help in fixing the menu display on the monitors in her restaurant. She had offered me free food if I could help fix & since I was free, I decided to go help her. After a bit of effort, I could get it to work on one monitor & suggested one pen drive each for each monitor, which she promptly got while I was trying to fix one monitor :).
It was late afternoon & I headed back to the hostel for a head bath. Since the entire hostel was by me, I decided to light up incense & this took me back to London days when I used to light these in the office as I used to take bath in office post my cycle to work regime.
I went back to Ingeborg’s restaurant for my rightly earned free food & I requested her to make an Indian chai (which she had offered the previous day) & she gladly did. This time, I was pretty hungry so I dint take the pic of the food (& the chai).
The rest of the day was talking with Matthews & just went like the previous one. My back was feeling much better & I was all set to start my ride. In the night, I planned to reach Roldal which was around 230 kms away & figured a camping site whose reviews indicated it was a cheap place.
The next day morning was a usual affair. I packed stuff & left by like 8 AM. None of the cafes in Evje were open at that time, so I went to the petrol station for a coffee & met this elderly guy whose name I do not remember.
He had literally his entire household stuffed in his car & he was the first one to start the conversation. He quickly figured I am from India & then started to talk about his stay in Goa. On telling that I am here for coffee, he asked if I have a coffee mug. I was carrying one & when I took it out, he snatched it from hand & asked me to follow. He went in, poured himself filter coffee (most cafes in Norway have self serve filter coffee section), came out & then handed me the coffee. He then mentioned, he has a free subscription at the petrol pump for coffee :).
He said he has a farm nearby & he asked if I would like to visit. Considering I had already rested quite a bit in Evje, I politely turned the offer down & told him that I need to go north. With that, I boarded my bike & bade him farewell.
I realized that I have not left the hostel key in the hostel & I still had it in my jacket pocket. May be the whole coffee episode was just a way to make me aware of the key as I had to take off my riding jacket & that is when I reached the pocket to realize I was carrying the key. I headed back to the hostel & Tony has just reached there. I handed him the key, setup my GoPro & took a final picture of the hostel before leaving.
I reached Valle ( I was earlier contemplating staying at Valle) & took a pitstop at public toilet. The toilet was pretty impressive.
I also decided to get myself coffee & stopped by at Nordibo Cafe . I was so glad that I did. The place was run by someone local & I took a local dish which was yum. It had goat cheese that was produced locally & I could say that from the taste of the dish.
After a sumptuous meal & a double shot espress with milk (my variant of flat white in Norway) that costed me 150 NOKs (around 12 Euros), I started off to Roldal. Snow soon started to appear after Valle & at some point, the snow next to the road got pretty high.
It also became pretty cold & both my feet & hands have started to freeze. I decided to put on my shoe cover.
Show cover did sort out the cold for me & I stopped by at a place just to check the map.
I rode to the campsite but quickly realized it is too cold in Roldal for camping outside. There was nobody at the reception & I called at the number mentioned there. The person said all the huts were booked & suggested me to check nearby. He also mentioned that it was negative temperature previous night so camping outside is something he would be wary of.
I think I was definitely worried at the moment. My masterplan of finding cheap places at the last moment has definitely failed me. I got into panic mode & started to call the campsites located nearby by getting their number from Google Map. Most were fully booked. There was one which had a 6 bed hut but the lady (owner) asked for 1100 NOKs (around 100 Euros) & I told her thats outside my budget.
I was desperate but I had time (it was just 3 PM by then). Not sure on Booking.com, Google Map or Airbnb, I could see cheaper options around Trolltunga area. So I started to look for hostels there. Trolltunga was around 80 kms from Roldal. I remember calling the Trolltunga hostel & the owner was very helpful. He explained his entire place is booked because there was an avalanche & govt had to displace people from mountains & house them at this place. He suggested to check Blue House which is another hostel. Blue House has the same story that it was fully booked.
I then called Trolltunga Camping & while talking to the owner, I figured that the temperature at the place is not freezing & I can actually camp. So I decided to try my luck there. The owner suggested to camp close to the lake. When I reached the place, there was only one camper van parked. I decided to pitch my tent next to the water body as was recommended.
I then went to nearby town Odda to have some dinner. I remember the place I looked up on Google Map was closed & then I had to walk into the pizza & kebab place next to it. The pizza was decent. I went for the walk in the city & it had pretty nice view.
I then came back to the campsite. By now, the reception was open & paid 150 NOKs (around 12 Euros) for the campsite, got some free bathing tokens (you need to put the token for hot water to come in the bathroom) & then went to take a bath.
I could see 2 more bikers who were cooking food. They had come when I was away for dinner. Little did I know that I will end up spending a lot of time with one of the bikers, Lucas in coming days. After bath, I was sitting & thinking of writing blog posts, that is when one of the bikers, Olev said I am welcome to join them & after 5 min, I did. They had lighted a nice fire & were having beers which they gladly shared with me. Lucas went to sleep soon but Olev & I kept talking for quite some time.
When we went to bed, I figured that my feet were cold & however hard I try, I could not warm them. I was too lazy to get socks out from my bag & I thought to myself - its just cold feet, I wont gonna die - & went back to sleep. For the next day, Lucas has said he will show us some nice places around & had requested me to not leave early. So I was like - well, I would let Lucas decide the day for us. With that thought, not sure when I slept. The cold feet did keep waking me up but it was not that bad.