Svalbard — A journey to remember
By Aarav 13
During our journey of Europe in the summer, we went to a unique country not many may know about. It is called Svalbard, a country that lies near the Arctic Circle. It is the closest inhabitable country to the North Pole.
I was so excited since I had read about Midnight Sun and now I was about to experience it.
When we first arrived at Svalbard, I noticed the rugged landscape that looked a desert .
There are only 2 flights from Oslo daily to Svalbard. Everyone goes through immigration and passport control in Svalbard whether they come from Norway or anywhere else. There is no visa requirement in Svalbard.
Our hotel , Radisson Blu, is located in Spitsbergen island. This is the only inhabited island in Svalbard. A normal tourist does not have permission to leave this island without experts.
The hotel’s restaurant was quite nice. There were some unsual items on the menu like reindeer meat ! We went into our warm rooms to sleep since we were so jetlagged. We had to close our sunlight blocking blinds since the sun never sets as Svalbard! It was midnight but seemed like 4pm in the afternoon.
We planned two activities in Svalbard — A day out with huskies and a cruise on the Arctic Ocean.
The next day, we had to woke up early. We were picked up from our hotel by our host Husky Travellers. Tommy Jordbrudal our host has been a dog musher for many years. He has competed in many races including the the world’s longest dog sled race, Iditarod and he has led expeditions to the North Pole!
He gave us an insight into the life of a musher. We have a Sibernian Husky , Axl who I blog about, at home. While Axl is pampered by us and lives a life of luxury , the dogsledding huskies are working dogs and they DO work very hard. Tommy had about 50 huskies and he trains them daily . In winter these huskies pull dogsleds on snow and in summer they pull dogsleds on wheels.
One of Tommy’s huskies is Foxi — she had an interesting story ( now a book) of being an underdog to become the lead dog for Tommy. She is the Guiness book for being the only dog to have participated in the Iditarod and gone to North Pole!
We saw her, however she was not going to sled with us that day, since she is much older now.
Tommy and his team showed us how to use the dogsled. We helped harness the dogs and gave them water before the start of the journey.
We did a total of 10 miles in a total of 45 minutes to an hour’s time. The dogs were running in a slanted position. This intrigued me, since I have never seen Axl run like that and he only ran in a straight line. We had two stops where we gave them water as they perspire and froth through their mouth while running.
When we came back the dogs were rewarded for their hard work. I learnt that their favorite treat was frozen salmon. I gave the treat to them as well.
Tommy delighted us with some yummy soup. Since I love many different foods, I tried a Norwegian soup which was chicken broth, pork, and vegetables and a special type of bread.
Then we watched a documentary on his dogs and their sledding adventures. Overall, it was a really fun experience.
The following day, we headed out after breakfast to catch a fjord-cruise to the Nordenskiöld Glacier & Pyramiden.
It was a very nice day, we saw arctic birds, humming beluga whales and even a couple polar bears!
Pyramiden is a ghost town — it in as abandoned Soviet coal mine settlement. Pyramiden was closed in 1998 and has since remained largely abandoned with most of its infrastructure and buildings still in place due to the cold climate.
On our way back from the cruise, we saw the Global Seed Vault from a distance. This seed vault safeguards over 1 million seeds from around the world.
My trip to Svalbard will be incomplete if I do not mention Cafe Huskies . It is a cafe where people can enjoy a coffee and play with the resident huskies. I played with Tequila and Tycho and that brought me great joy as I was really missing Axl.
Svalbard is truly amazing experience and I will love to return there for Polar night.
