Jana kahaan tha, pahunch gaye kahan!

We had about half a day in Åndalsnes and the visitor center had several leaflets outlining the best hiking trails through the Romsdalen Alps, a string of mountains enveloping Åndalsnes. It seems there are 200 hiking trails there, unfortunately not very well marked! I guess Finland had spoilt me as in Rukka the variants of the trails were so well marked.

There was a “city peak” …the Nesaksla (715m above sea level) which starts in the center of town and has spectacular views over the Romsdals fjord and is supposed to peak after only one hour hiking. As I looked up to the peak, I was like this is going to be very steep since they say it peaks quite fast. I was a little hesitant, but my friend was we’ll go till we can. This is a picture of the peak we climbed…or at least attempted to climb!!!

Every time we go for hikes or in the forests my friend is is looking for trees to climb on. We jokingly call her ‘Jane’. And this trail was her fantasy…we would stop every few minutes to climb trees. The blue berries on the way too kept us occupied. I think we would have easily eaten 1/2 kg each that day!

After about 2.5 hrs of trekking, the peak still didn’t seem to be in sight.  And the trail also didn’t seem very steep. An old couple with their son had crossed us on the way when we were on top of a tree.

When we caught up with them again, we asked how far till the trail finishes. And he was like another 30 mins…but when we mentioned Nesaksla, he couldn’t stop his smile. We were on the wrong trail!!!!

We wanted to go to trail no 7….and we were on 8…not much difference in number but….:-)

We decided to return from there…while going we were so occupied climbing trees and eating berries that we didn’t keep any landmarks. So while returning there was this V and we didn’t know which way to go. And we had a train to catch at 4:00!!! We tried the right side…after few minutes I was like, this doesn’t seem to be where we came from. So back we went and started walking on the left side of the V. Again I felt that this was not where we came from!!!!

Confusion….when suddenly P noticed the orange mushroom that we had seen on the way. Whew…relief! But its so funny, when returning we just seemed to think that we hadn't crossed that place before…it looked different and we couldn’t seem to find many of the things that we had stopped to look at earlier….like my HIDEOUT!

As we returned I had no regret that we were on the were trail, we enjoyed this one quite a lot! And it wasn’t steep at all so we didn’t tire out also. And imagine if we had got lost on the steeper trail, going back and forth wouldn’t have been very nice when one has a train to catch!

So for once I was glad we lost our way!