Northern Norway is famous for the Northern Lights and the Midnight Sun.My colleague Sushil Mainali and I living in southern Norway-Oslo just for one year, and we have the wish to experience both of these wonders of natural. Northern lights can be seen in winter, when it is dark and midnight sun in the summer.
Though we are the journalist we are here as Fredskorpset participant. We have very limited budget. That’s why we couldn't experiance both northern lights.
The reason to choose midnight sun is we read in our course book in school,
"Norway is the country of midnight sun", but when we arrived in Oslo on 2nd week of November 2006, hardly we could see the sun even in the day time. No one told us the dark side of the story.
We enjoyed the dark winter very much. It was different experience for us to find the snow in the ocean or sea level, because we have to go above 3500mtr. to find the snow even in the winter season.
It is the natural gift for the Norwegian that they have both freezing dark and the bright summer, round the clock. We would like to experience and wants to share with people living in our part of the world.
Because of we are the TV journalists we have the extra advantage to bring the story via audio visual media. My colleague Sushil and I decided to travel northern Norway in 2nd week of July.
It is difficult to travel northern Norway without having own car. Colleagues from the office in FIVH suggest us to make the proper plan, book all the travel and the logistic things, the hotels are very much expensive, and the public transportation is not regular.
Most of the people are traveling with own car, but we don't have the car. We can't afford the rental car, but we need it. The northern Norway called Finnmark district, is bigger then the Denmark.
We tried to plan our trip but we don't have enough idea about region, geography and the system. That’s why we just book the ticket from Oslo to Tromsø and Alta to Oslo, for return.
Our only plan is to bring some story about the midnight sun and know more about 'Sami' the indigenous people living in Finnmark and bring some success story from the Sámi land. Mainly how did they succeed to ensure or established their rights, their life, culture, tradition-fishing and reindeer herding and so on……
Nepal is heading towards constitution assembly election soon. People are trying to find the ways to ensure their rights in the constitution. Some groups are using the violent method as well, that is really good for our future.
Though Nepal is small country we have the huge cultural diversity. We have more then 60 different indigenous community officially recognized. And they are also fighting for to ensure their rights. Being a fredskorpset participant we would like to share the success story of indigenous people 'Sami' from northern Norway, so that they could understand what can be done and how can they do.
We began our journey on 10th of July. We flew from Oslo to Tromsø by Norwegian airlines and then travel by bus to Kåfjord to be participating in the Riddu Riddu festival. The festival is organized by Sami the indigenous people from Norway. Sámi' lives not only in Norway but they are living in the northern part of Norway, Sweden Finland and Russia.
We enjoyed very interesting cultural presentation from Sami people and Invited Komi and other Indigenous people from different part of the world. We also captured some of the activities from the festival.
We stay for 4 days in the festival. Most of the people came to the festival were staying in the tent; we also took tent with us. Most people were drunk in the festival. Though they are drunk too much but they are not fighting each other. If it is in India, Nepal or Bangladesh there would be big fight. We appreciate this very much.
From Riddu Riddu we decided to go Karasjok, where there is the Sami parliament. We got the ride with Karti Somby, a friend working in NRK Sami radio in Karasjok. She drove through the northern part of Finland, Kautokeino, and Karasjok.
We stay at the tent in Karasjok Camping site near to the Sami parliament.
Karasjok is known as the capital of Finnmark. We visited Sami parliament and meet with some member of the parliament. We also visited Sami Park, Sami Radio/TV and the Museum during our stay in Karasjok.
We stay in Karasjok for 3 days, it is very nice place for living but we encounter with large number of mosquitoes. We haven't experience mosquitoes in Oslo, Tromsø and Kåfjord as well, but in Karasjok it is really disturbing.
Kautokeino and the Karasjok is the place of the reindeer Sami people's area, but we just saw few reindeer in the Sami Park to show to the tourist. They have long tradition to keep reindeer in the costal area during summer and back to inland during the winter. We really wanted to see and film the reindeer and the midnight sun.
For that we needed to go far north that is North Cape or Hammerfest. We decided to go North Cape and jump up in the bus that is going to Honningsvåg.
It is the Artic region, and the summer time. There was no dark round the clock. It was cloudy and rainy days. When we reach in the Honningsvåg the nearest city from North Cape still it was raining. We entered to the tourist information center and inquire about the possibility to see the reindeer and midnight.
She assured us and replied either we could see the reindeer or the midnight sun, if we didn't see one of these then we are unlucky; and should go back to home.
It was raining and we had to wait for few hours for bus to North Cape; we went to the coffee shop just near by the bus stop. I drink the worlds northern most breweries beer.
We stay in Skarsvåg the northernmost fishing village and from there we could easily find the reindeer. We went to North Cape to experience the midnight sun but it was cloudy and rainy. Somehow we saw the midnight sun for about 1 hour on 21st July 2007 from 71 degree 10 minute 21 second north.
From North Cape we came down to Alta by bus. We visited Alta museum, Mazi, Alta dam, and Alta River the world famous river for salmon fishing. We also saw the midnight sun from Alta as wel. In Alta and Mazi we meet Sami activist and fisherman and so on…..
We spend 17days in Finnmark. It was very nice and fruitful travel for us. The report will be made on video and will be on-air from Nepal television. I apologize for the difficulty; enjoy the pictures from northern Norway.
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