When it comes to spectacular mountain landscapes, the Dolomites in the northeastern part of Italy, are probably one of the most striking I have been given the chance to wander in. These pre-Alps limestone reeds are not particularly high, but they are usually nearly perfectly vertical. This give to the Dolomites a unique look, almost human-made, architectural.

When you first look at the dolomites, you first start seeing spires, cathedrals, fortresses. After a second or two, however, you quickly realise that no human would have nearly come close to building anything like this. I suppose this primal urge to try to anthropomorphise everything is intrinsic to human beings...

Speaking of scale...

One thing that I love in the mountains is that everything around you, starting with the weather, can drastically change in a matter of minutes. There are feelings that are difficult to render fully, such as the fresh and raw wind blowing into your face, putting you off balance for a second and hereby, here again, giving you a sense to the perspective, reminding how ephemeral your presence is.

On this trip, I was particularly lucky with the light. It was incredible, constantly changing, putting into perspective the different layers of the landscape, giving it a fugacious and labile character, which enables a human being to get a better sense of the depth and height of what surrounds her/him. In a perfectly sunny day, the white light erases nuances and flattens topography (and you struggle during your hike because of the intense heat...).

#travel #mountains #alps #Italy #Dolomites

I would not say that I know Georgia well. I travelled there only twice, one of them for less than twenty-four hours. The first time was a business trip, on top of which I added some ten days of vacation. We headed to the Svaneti region, as the Tusheti, reportedly wilder, was not yet accessible from Tbilisi due to the high passes still blocked with snow. We travelled to Zugdidi and then to Mestia with mashruktas, these minibuses that are the norm for public transport in the region.

It took us some patience with drivers not willing to leave before their bus was full despite the schedule, long hours in the sun and some scary moments on the road before we made it to a unique place. It was an inn, kept by a family from the valley who had associated themselves with a Norwegian tourist who had seen the unique potential of the remote location, just underneath the majestic south face of mount Ushba (4,710 m). We were secluded from the world for a few days and enjoy it fully, having breakfast in front of the house and hiking a different direction every day.

Breakfast in paradise, with Mount Ushba in the background

We could enjoy magnificent views of the Svaneti mountain ridge to the south as well

We then headed to Borjomi National Park and it was really beautiful there. The season was perfect, although it was very cold at night when we slept outside. There was a beautiful mixture of conifers and deciduous forest, with an incredible contrast between the light green of the young Spring leaves with the dark green of the pine trees.

A few shades of green

We just had one issue: we took our water directly from the eponymous water Spring, very well known around the region for its virtues and slightly salty taste. Little did we know that what you buy in bottles has nothing to do with the water from the Spring, horribly stinky and salty. As we did not bring any water purifier with us, we basically did not drink for almost two days...

The national park was the first one in Georgia and required permits, which we had. Guards control hikers randomly inside the park, armed with shotguns... It was reasonably intimidating.

We also had some nicer encounters

#travel #Georgia #mountains

Today, a real challenge: choose only five pictures of my native mountains, where I hiked many years and took thousands of pictures.

The first picture is the Vignemale. My parents met there, in a mountain hut. It is the highest peak of the French Pyrénées (the higher summits are located in Spain). Actually, it is technically on the border with Spain, although the well-known north face that you can see is in France. The Southern side used to be covered with one of Pyrénées' largest glacier, the Ossoue Glacier. Due to global warming, though, the glacier will be gone in a few years only. I remember when I first did the ascent of this mountain, when I was 11. We walked four hours on the glacier before reaching the ridge to the summit.

The mountain was first made famous but an Englishman, Henri Russell, who fell in love with it. He even resided inside the caves carved near the summit at times. What is incredible about the Pyrénées is its strong history and the characters associated with it. A word was even coined in French for it: Pyrénéisme.

* The Vignemale, probably my favourite mountains of all*

The next picture is part of the Maniportet lakes, Néouvielle massif. I slept there on a four-day hike in 2016. It was the most peaceful atmosphere possible. That is why I love backpacking several days.

You would think that the next picture was taken somewhere in Japan, right? No, it is taken in the Spanish Pyrénées, in an incredibly beautiful park called Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici. It is an incredible place, with hundreds of lakes. It feels as though as you were in a dream there. The next three pictures were taken in a six-day backpacking trip in the fall of 2013. A wonderful and phantasmagoric memory.

#travel #Pyrénées #mountains

This was one of the most beautiful places I probably visited. An archipelago, north of the Arctic circle, at the end of the world, with settlements with such surrealistic names, such as “Å”...

The setting is quite spectacular: you board a ferry in Bodo and head towards the archipelago. During the crossing the shark-tooth-like ridge start appearing on the horizon falling straight into the water. As if geology had created this archipelago yesterday...

This landscape, you find it everywhere, even though there are a few settlements here and there, and these famous rorbu, the fishermen's houses. Even though many of these houses have been reconverted into nice bed and breakfast, some of them are still used and you can still see the cod drying on wooden constructions.

There are not so many roads on the archipelago, but you can still follow some unpaved road without any signs. That's what I did back in 2011. At the very end of one road, that's what I had stumbled upon.

The mountains are surrounded by water, everywhere. There are some places where you may easily feel on a paradisiac island (which it is) with clear beautiful warm water.

This is only an impression, though...

And, as this is Norway, you have a constitutional right to sleep anywhere you want in the wild and thus enjoy some unbelievable landscape that makes you feel like the luckiest person on earth.

And as it is so much up north, the sun never really sets. But wildlife, for some reason, feels as though it is night and you cannot really see them. And this is how I saw a beautiful couple of foxes, playing a few yards away from the tent for quite a while, before disappearing as discreetly as they had come.

To be continued in 2020...

#travel #Norway

There is a growing practice online with the lockdown that people share pictures of their trips with others to help themselves and others to escape mentally. I like that and considering that I was lucky enough to travel quite a bit and like taking pictures, I thought that I would the same -hopefully- every day, one location at the time, with no more than five pictures (here is the real challenge...).

I decided to start with Norway, the country that impressed me the most, which I nonetheless divide in two parts, already bending the rule that I just set. Here are five pictures of memorable trips in this incredibly beautiful place.

The first picture on top of this post is, of course... a fjord. Probably the most well-known emblem of Norway. This high and narrow valleys were carved by gigantic glaciers. The cliffs can measure up to 1500 m. The water inside is a mix of fresh and sea water. There is an unmatchable beauty to this and I can look at them for hours, fascinated by their sheer beauty at every moment of the day.

On that picture, I was looking at the Lysefjord on my last morning in it. Back in 2016, I took a leave without pay when I learned that a family member was diagnosed with cancer. During these three months, I traveled to Stavanger, in the south of Norway. From there, a boat dropped me in the Lysefjord, worldwide known for its natural platform overlooking the fjord, Preikestolen, and a boulder suspended above a 1000m abyss, Kjeragbolten. I walked for five days and walked up and down 160 km around the fjord. I had some very nice and some horrific weather (17 hours of sustained rain without interruption). It was a truly beautiful journey, alone in the immensity of the fjord.

On the same trip I took that picture, not far from the famous Kjeragbolten. It gives an idea of the scale of the landscape.

The fjords were glaciers, but these have not disappeared from Norway. The picture below was taken in 2011 on a road trip taken across the country. I do not remember the exact location unfortunately and there were no GPS in the cameras at the time to remind me of where it was taken. I just remember walking towards the end of a valley and peaking at this tens of meters -if not more- thick ice cap on top of the cliff.

Between two fjords, this landscape was captured in a village which was not particularly known. It was not mentioned in the guide and yet the beauty of the landscape struck me.

And because it is difficult to get tired of fjords, here is a picture taken during a hike on the sides of the very famous Geirangerfjord its huge waterfall. The ferry carrying cars helps apprehend the scale of the landscape.

#travel #Norway