Day 2 – Eksingedalsvegen

I Wake up in the wet with an assortment of slugs and other curious insects exploring the inside of my tent. After a lengthy extraction process I pack up the tent and head into town to make some breakfast
Unlike Iceland, fresh water is oddly hard to come by. There are of course dozens of streams flowing down from the mountains, but due to the steep terrain they tend to be drained away in some unseen gutter, or are simply not accessible without some risky hiking up the steep hills. So for now I would have to source my water from camps and random homes.

Once I felt whole again I set off on the cycling route, heading east towards a ski town named Voss. That was my gateway to the Fjords and mountains I was seeking in Norway. By car the distance was 25km, by bicycle, closer to 90km thanks to a few inconveniently placed tunnels and a single detour that went out into the middle of nowhere before looping back to civilization. The detour was a road called the Eksingedalsvegen and it was my goal for today.

The weather had cleared up so I had an easy and mostly flat ride along the fjord heading north up the detour, the road darting from village to village until the villages became sparse and eventually stopped appearing altogether. The fjord too stopped, replaced by a rapidly flowing river. I was definitely in the wilderness now.

For the rest of the day I chased the river to its source, cycling past innumerable rapids and waterfalls, as well as the occasional farm. Eventually I hit the source, a large lake, just as the sun was beginning to set. I was 3/4 done, when I turned a corner and saw a large climb ahead of me. I recalled exactly how little sleep I had the night before and decided to call it a night. I approached a nearby farmhouse and received permission to camp on their lawn. Most of my travels today had been past terrain that was no good for camping and I didn’t like my chances finding a good campsite before nightfall.